Wild Pitch

by Sloan Johnson

  “That was an isolated incident,” I said incredulously. “I did that one time and I learned my lesson.”

  “When it came to drinking, yes.” Sean smirked, and I wondered where this trip down memory lane was going to go next. “What about the time you said the water wasn’t that cold when we all went to Barker’s parents’ cabin to celebrate the end of the season before everyone went home for the winter? We all told you it was stupid, but that didn’t stop you from stripping down to your boxers and doing a cannonball off the end of the pier.”

  “How was I supposed to know that stupid lake was fed by streams coming down from the mountains?” I argued. “And yeah, it took my balls a month to drop down from somewhere near my lungs, but I survived.”

  “Yeah, because I jumped in and saved your ass when you got a leg cramp,” Sean reminded me. “And then both of us had to walk back to the cabin, soaking wet, and wait for Barker to grab us dry clothes because he didn’t want us dripping all over the floor.”

  Why did Sean have to bring up that night? Of all the shit I’d ever done, that stunt haunted me over the years. There was no way I’d ever forget the sight of Sean’s naked body shivering in the moonlight. We were alone and his back was turned to me, and I allowed myself to admire the way his muscles rippled as he ran the towel over his arms and chest. I tried to play it cool, but I finally had to turn away so he wouldn’t see what he was doing to me. When my marriage hit rock bottom, I’d thought about how much different life would have been if I’d had the balls to reach for him the way I wanted to. But I couldn’t, because there were too many people around and I didn’t want to raise suspicions.

  “Okay, I get your point. I’m stubborn and don’t react well when told I can’t do something,” I conceded. “You do realize that that’s a trait some people find admirable, right?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Sean looked over at me and my heart stuttered at what I saw. He stared at me, unblinking, as the tip of his tongue slid across the seam of his lips. I didn’t know how to react to that, so I started flipping through channels on the TV.

  I waited until we’d polished off the entire pizza and the dishes were in the sink before confronting Sean about what I assumed was weighing on his mind.

  “So, are you still going to tell me you and Eric were just friends?” I asked, handing him a second beer. I’d switched to soda, on the off chance that he decided he should head back to the hotel. The only thing that’d make today worse was a DUI.

  “We were. We are,” he protested. His gaze bounced around the room, but never in my direction.

  “Bullshit. Trades are part of the game. We both know that, and yet Eric leaving managed to get into your head and throw off your game today. You can tell yourself whatever you want, but I know you better than that,” I reminded him. We’d lived together for the better part of a year, and not once was he able to pull the wool over my eyes.

  “Fine,” he grumbled, taking a long draw off his beer. I thought that was the closest I’d get to an admission from him as he rubbed the back of his neck. Then he crooked a finger against the side of his chin, twisting to the left, then the right, then the left again to crack his neck. As I watched him go through his nervous routine, I regretted pushing him when he obviously wasn’t ready. Something inside of him clicked and he started to talk again. “There may have been benefits included, but really, it wasn’t more than that. Neither of us are stupid enough to get involved with a teammate, so we settled for getting cozy in the closet when the urge struck. We figured it worked pretty damn well that the two gay guys wound up in the same room. What we did was no different from the shit the rest of the guys were doing, except we didn’t have to go out and find a new trick in each town.”

  “So you fucked and you were close enough that his leaving got to you, but you’re going to tell me you weren’t involved?” I shouldn’t push the issue, but I was pissed. I hated the fact that he was obviously in denial about what they meant to one another.

  “Yes, Mason, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Look, just because I don’t want a relationship doesn’t mean I don’t want to get laid every once in a while,” he argued. “And not wanting a commitment doesn’t mean I want a random stranger. Eric understood that and respected it. He’s in the same boat as me and we did what needed to be done.”

  “Then why the head trip? Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve sworn you’d never do anything that fucked with your game. What’s so special about him that he was worth it?” As I ranted, I thought I sounded like the scorned friend who’d never be what Sean needed. And how could I be when he had no clue that he was so much more than just my best friend?

  Sean jumped off the couch and started pacing around the room, squeezing the back of his neck. “Because other than you, he’s the only person who’s come close to understanding how much baseball means to me,” he admitted. “I knew he wasn’t cut out for no-strings sex but he was willing to settle for that for me. He’s a good guy and yeah, I’m going to miss him. There, are you happy now?”

  Sean slammed his beer down on the table with more force than necessary before storming off down the hall. I sat there waiting for him, wondering if I was happier knowing the truth. No, I really wasn’t. Hearing him admit that there was something going on with Eric stung.

  I gave both of them credit for at least acknowledging who and what they were. I was too much of a coward for that. I figured I had it easy because my door swung both ways. I tried to ignore the way Sean looked when he walked around shirtless back when we lived together. I went out and screwed anything with tits and a heartbeat, and no one needed to know that it was Sean’s face I saw when I came. It was safer that way. Safe wasn’t working for me anymore. Safe meant walking around with this huge secret of my own that no one, not even my best friend, knew. Teresa had her suspicions, but I’d laughed every time she accused me of spending too much time with my man-crush, telling her she was crazy.

  Sean was gone long enough that I wondered if he was locked in the bathroom calling a cab to come and pick him up. It was stupid of me to pry into his life that way. Other than admitting that he wasn’t interested in women when I kept pressing him to be my wingman, we’d never talked about what happened behind closed doors. I never let myself forget what a show of trust it was for him to make that revelation. My chest filled with pride, knowing that he shared his secret with me when not even his family knew the truth. And I’d carried around the shame of my cowardice ever since. Our lives would have been so different if I’d had the strength to say, “Me too.”

  After twenty agonizing minutes, I pulled myself off the couch and went in search of my friend so I could apologize. The door to the bathroom was wide open and the room was empty. There was no sign of him anywhere until I rounded the corner and saw his long legs hanging off the end of the spare bed. I called out his name, my voice barely a whisper, only to be answered with a soft snore.

  I tried not to think about what had him so worn out. The jealousy coursing through me as images of him and Eric sharing one last night together was stronger than anything I’d experienced when I knew my wife was cheating on me. When I’d thought about her with another man, my only concern was whether she was making him wrap it so she didn’t bring home an unpleasant souvenir. When I thought about Eric giving Sean one last night to remember, my chest tightened and it became hard to breathe. That should have been a bright red flag, but I pushed those thoughts away, too. Pretty soon, I was going to fall over backward from all the shit I pushed to the back of my brain in an attempt to ignore what I knew to be true.

  I carefully untied his sneakers and tossed them across the room. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you a bit more comfortable,” I whispered as I tugged on his arm. He was a big guy, with at least three inches and thirty pounds of muscle on me, so I wasn’t about to drag him up the bed. Knowing my luck, I’d wind up pulling a muscle and have to come up with a good cover story when I walked into the trainer’s office tomorrow.

  “Just leave
me be,” he grumbled, reaching over his head for a pillow.

  “Sean, I’m sorry if I crossed the line out there,” I started, not wanting to go to my own room without getting this off my chest. “I wasn’t trying to be nosy, but I worry about you. I always have. And I know how you are. You bottle everything up inside until it suffocates you. I guess I just wanted you to know you can still talk to me about anything.”

  Just don’t go into details. I’m not sure I can handle that, I added silently. He’d never know that I’d thought about him more often than not when rubbing one out in the shower or between the sheets after a long day.

  “Are you done now?” he asked. He opened his eyes as he rolled onto his side, squinting up at me in the darkness. “I’m pissy and I’m tired. I figured it’d be better for me to crash for a bit before I said something stupid. That’s all.”

  “Yeah, I’m done. Why don’t you get comfortable and I’ll check on you in a bit,” I offered. “I’ll take you back to the hotel in the morning.”

  I knew the pain of being alone where there used to be someone to keep you company, and I didn’t want that for him. It’d be bad enough when they got on the plane to Boston for the next series, but at least for one night I could spare him the time alone in his head.

  “I should probably get back to the hotel,” he responded as he moved up on the bed and rolled over to get comfortable. I had to laugh at his feeble protest.

  “Yeah, okay. Well then, you nap for a while and then I’ll take you back.”

  “Sounds good,” he said, already falling back to sleep. “Hey, Mace?”

  “Yeah?” I leaned against the doorframe, waiting to see if he’d say something or if he was already sleeping.

  “It’s good to see you again,” he said sincerely. “I missed you.”

  “Missed you too,” I responded. There was an unfamiliar ache in my chest and I wished he knew how much I thought about him when we were apart.

  I tried sitting down to play my game for a while to unwind, but it was futile. Sean was sleeping at the other end of the condo and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to help him. Well, I could, if I didn’t mind potentially throwing away seven years of friendship and having to explain why I’d never told another living soul that I’d always thought about what it’d be like to be with a man.

  I wound up sitting in the dark on the end of my bed, staring across the hall at Sean’s sleeping form in the other bedroom for a long time, wondering if it’d be worth mentioning to him. I knew deep down that my desire to explore the other side of my sexuality was part of the reason why I had no interest in finding a woman to spend a night with now that I was only a few formalities away from being a free man. If anyone would be able to help me sort myself out, it’d be Sean. He’d be patient with me and wouldn’t expect anything in return. But I couldn’t tell him, because that’d be like opening Pandora’s Box. Once he knew that much, I wouldn’t be content until I told him how often I’d thought about being with him, and that would be what sent him packing.

  Chapter 3

  It took me a minute to get my bearings when I first opened my eyes. Light streamed into the room from a door in the hall, so I knew I wasn’t in my hotel room. Then I remembered Mason coming in to check on me, to take care of me. I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to sort out reality from dreams, because I vaguely remembered him standing in the doorway, muttering to himself when he thought I was asleep.

  The clock on the nightstand read a few minutes after one in the morning. The condo was still as I walked to the kitchen for a glass of water. I leaned on the granite countertop, wondering who besides Mason knew what Eric and I had been doing in hotel rooms across the country. If they had, no one said anything, but that wasn’t any sort of assurance. It wasn’t exactly cool to go up to another guy and ask if he was plowing his roommate into the mattress, so they might be keeping their assumptions to themselves. And if those thoughts were floating around, today would have only helped to confirm their suspicions.

  “God, you’re an idiot sometimes,” I scolded myself. “You have to be more careful, otherwise you’re going to turn into a media spectacle, which is exactly what you’ve been trying to avoid this whole time.”

  “You need more help than I thought if you’re talking to yourself.” Mason’s rich voice startled me, causing me to spill half a glass of water all over the counter. I looked up and saw him leaning in the doorway, looking drop-dead gorgeous. The light streaming down the hall silhouetted him. His dark brown hair was long on top, sticking up in every direction from sleep. The heat of his nearly brilliant green eyes cut through the darkness. “This is why I wanted you to talk to me. When you talk to yourself in the dark, you come across as a little crazy.”

  I allowed Mason to lead me into the living room and we sat next to one another on the couch. He slid closer to me. I tried to ignore the heat of his body and the way his sweat pants shifted lower on his hips as he tried to get comfortable. He placed a hand on my knee, and my cock began stirring.

  Don’t do this, I warned myself. He’s your very straight best friend. You cannot sport wood just because he’s touching you.

  Maybe Mason was right; maybe I was losing my mind. “Are you feeling any better after a nap?” he asked, squeezing my knee. Yes, the nap took the edge off my anger and bitterness, but those feelings were quickly being replaced by desires I couldn’t possibly entertain.

  “Yes, Mom.” I sighed dramatically. “As much as I appreciate you worrying about me, it’s really not that big of a deal. I’m angry that they traded Eric, not so much for myself but because he’s a good guy and he was happy in Milwaukee.”

  “You say that, but I still worry about you,” he responded. He scooted close enough to me that I felt the heat of his body against my leg. “There’s something else on your mind and you need to talk about it. It’s okay to miss him.”

  “Mason, I’m fine,” I insisted. “Eric got a bum deal, I was upset that I let him leaving throw me off my game, and I got over it. Now, are we going to blow some shit up or what?”

  I leaned forward to grab the controllers and looked down to see Mason’s hand still on my leg. I sunk back into the cushions, handing him his controller as I settled in beside him. A chill raced through my body when he removed his hand. He had only placed it there as a way to reassure me that he was there for me, but I missed the contact. The pressure reminded me that he had strong hands that’d feel like heaven on other parts of my body.

  Every once in a while, I’d see Mason glance over at me, but the look on his face wasn’t that of a concerned friend. His eyes wandered down my chest, once landing on the slight bulge growing in my jeans. His cheeks flushed when he realized I’d caught him.

  “Um, Mace…” I set my controller back on the table and turned to face him. His chest rose and fell unsteadily and his pupils were dilated to the point I barely saw the ring of emerald around the edge of his irises. My body had reacted the same way to him in the past, but never expected to see such lust radiating from him.

  “Yeah?” He turned to mirror my position, not balking when his arm rested on mine and he wrapped his fingers around my forearm. I had to still be sleeping. There was no way in hell that my best friend, who happened to be very much straight and I had the memories of nights spent listening to women scream his name to prove it, was flirting with me.

  Rather than ask what was on the tip of my tongue, I looked down at my arm, to where his thumb was lightly tracing circles near my elbow. His eyes followed, and then he looked back up at me. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’re the one who has some explaining to do,” I said, trying to keep my tone casual.

  When Mason tried to move away from me, I placed my free hand on his leg. He looked down and back up at me and he seemed nervous. Mason Atley never got rattled. If he did, he never let anyone see it, and yet he sat inches away from me picking at lint on his pants while still rubbing his thumb over the hair on my arm.

  “Fuck, I promised mysel
f I wouldn’t do this, but I don’t think there’s any other option right now,” he groaned. He tried to pull his hand away from my arm, and I reached up to still him.

  “Wouldn’t do what?” I pressed, needing to hear from him that I wasn’t delusional.

  “Look, there’s something I haven’t told you. I don’t know why, since you would have understood, but I didn’t. And now, part of me thinks I’ll go crazy if I don’t tell you, but the other part of me is freaking out that you’ll be pissed,” he said quickly. “I don’t want to ruin our friendship, which is why I haven’t said anything.”

  “Good God, man! Spit it out already. If it helps, I promise I won’t hit you, no matter what it is that you’re trying to decide whether or not to say.” As I waited for him to speak, I wondered if it was possible that he was getting ready to blow my mind. The juvenile part of my brain got stuck on the thought of him blowing parts of my body and decided there were much better places he could blow. “Mace, you know every skeleton hiding in my closet and you’ve never judged me for any of it, so what makes you think I’d get upset with you?”

  “Because this is some pretty major shit,” he admitted. “Okay, but you have to remember that you promised you wouldn’t hit me. And if you do want to relocate my jaw, remember that you have to pitch again in a few days, and it’d suck to have to go on the DL over me.”