“Nice work out there, Shane,” Coach Murphy squeezed my shoulder as he walked up to me in the cafeteria later that night. “You’re a real natural. With a little bit of work on that slider, you’ll be unhittable.”
“Thanks, Coach. I’ll be sure to get out there early and stay late to work on it.” For some odd reason, putting in a little bit of extra effort here didn’t seem like punishment.
“Sounds good, Shane. Keep up the good work, kid.” Coach tipped his hat to me as I walked away, dinner tray in hand, to the table where Dylan was sitting with Scott and Eric, two friends we met earlier in the day while running drills.
“Dude, did you leave anything up there for the rest of us?” Scott joked as he took stock of my overly full plate.
“What? I’m bulking up. You might want to follow suit.” Scott was fast, but mainly because he was skinny as hell.
“Works to my advantage. Last season I was only caught stealing twice. I’ll take speed over strength any day,” he mumbled around a full mouth of pasta.
I would never admit it to anyone aloud, but while my main motivation for the extra workouts was to prove my father wrong, I also had an ulterior motive – to be finally big enough to fight back.
“So I guess that means you won’t be joining us in the optional weight-lifting session tonight, huh?” I asked as I sank down into my chair.
“No, we’ll be there. Even though it says ‘optional’, we know they keep track of those things,” Eric answered for both him and Scott. “Our coach back home would kill us if he found out we didn’t do everything that was ‘optional’. He’s quite the overachiever.”
“Sounds familiar,” I grumbled under my breath, wondering if their coach was as mean about over-achieving as my father was.
We laughed through the rest of dinner, sharing horror stories about our coaches and laughing about some of the stuff that went down that day. For the first time in so long, it felt cathartic to be with friends and not have to worry about anything.
However, stepping into the weight room a few hours later brought the worry back in full force. Determined to prove my father wrong, and maybe finally shut him the fuck up, I grabbed a pre-printed workout routine from Coach, and then Eric, Scott, Dylan, and I hit the circuit. After forty-five minutes, our arms and legs were shaking and we were covered in sweat.
I tossed Dylan a bottle of water and sat next to him on the bench where he was sitting, his head in his hands wiping away the sweat with a towel. “Hey, man, you okay?”
He didn’t say anything at first, swigging back most of his water in one huge gulp. He made another pass with the towel across his face before finally looking over to me. When he did, it was as if he was seeing me for the first time, as if I hadn’t been in the same room as him for the last hour. “Yeah, I’m good.” He stood from the bench quickly, again without even looking at me. When he got to the door, he turned around, an almost sad look on his face. “Must’ve ate something funky at dinner or maybe I’m just shot from the long-ass day. I’m gonna head back to the room.”
When he walked away, I knew that something else was bothering him, but I was in the zone and needed to get in another round on the circuit before I could call it quits.
Standing at the head of the bench, I spotted Eric on his second round of bench-presses. “He okay?” Scott asked from the other side of the bench, tipping his head at the doors through which Dylan had just left.
I shrugged before helping Eric place the bar back in its holder. “Yeah, I guess. Just tired probably.”
“No, I mean like…” Scott’s words fell silent as Eric stood from the bench.
Eric shot him a glare and gritted out, “Dude,” as a way to silence whatever Scott was just about to say.
I stood back, watching the entire exchange pass in the blink of an eye, not really sure what to make of it. “What do you mean?” I folded my arms across my chest, my voice taking on a defensive tone.
“Nothing. He meant nothing, right, Scott?” Eric shot him another look as he twisted open a bottle of water.
Scott straightened his back, took a deep breath, and puffed out a “whatever,” before facing me. “Is he,” rather than using his words to complete the sentence, he flipped his hand back and forth, “you know? A fag?”
I’d like to think there wasn’t anger or hatred in the way he spat out the word “fag”, but then I’d be lying. I’d also like to say that my world didn’t spin a little, threatening to swallow me whole as the word tumbled out either, but then again, I’d be lying once more.
Scott, a kid who I’d known less than twenty-four hours, had put a voice to what I’d always thought about my best friend, but could never say myself.
He’d also put a voice to my own darkest secret – one which would never see the light of day.
Knowing there was no way I could let them think that, or let them see my faltering, I recovered quickly and tossed my sweaty towel in his face. “No way in hell. I’ve known Dylan my whole life. Don’t you think I’d know if he was queer?” A feeling of betrayal punched me in the gut at calling him a queer, even if it was only intended to defend and protect him.
It still makes you a coward.
“No need to get your sac all twisted. I was just curious.” Scott punched me jokingly on the arm, and all I could think about was whether I’d been convincing enough.
Twenty minutes later, when we were all done with our workout, the three of us trekked across the campus to our dorms, more than exhausted and in desperate need of a shower. When I got back to my room, Dylan wasn’t there, but it was clear he had been. Shrugging off the unease from the early conversation, or accusation depending on how you looked at it, I showered quickly, not wanting to focus on the possibility of Dylan being gay.
Or the reality of me being gay.
After being at the camp for a week, I wasn’t so sure I’d made the best choice. Rather than giving me the time to think and clear my head, all being there had done was confused the fuck out of me. Reading over the words I’d written in my journal over the seven days didn’t help at all. At home, it was different. No one looked at me differently. I was just Dylan Hopkins; there was nothing more to me. Maybe that was because I was never without Shane and Reid – maybe they took the focus off me.
But here, I felt like there was a sign over my head in rainbow-colored letters flashing “homo” wherever I went. I was pretty sure Scott caught me staring at Shane in the weight room the other night. He glared at me sideways and whispered something under his breath to Eric who immediately looked my way.
It became nearly impossible to be around everyone in the weight room and even more so after we worked out. My brain was turning into a jumbled mess and I had no clue how to un-mess it. So while everyone was out doing whatever it was that they did after we were free for the day, I pulled out my journal and tried to clear my head.
Most nights, I wrote until my hand felt like it was going to fall off, but tonight, Shane came barreling through door, laughing like a fool.
Before he could see it, I slid my journal in-between the mattress and box spring and sat up straight against the wall. “You gotta come down to the lake,” Shane puffed out, trying to catch his breath.
“Why?” I kicked my legs over the side of the bed and slid my feet into my Nike sandals, ready to go in an instant, despite the skepticism in my voice.
I grabbed my key from the desk and pulled it over my neck, letting in fall down my back in-between my shoulder blades. The humid summer air that was usually unbearable during the day was marginally better. As we walked closer to the lake, the air grew a bit cooler. The moonlight shimmered across the lake as a loon called out in the distance. In the shadows, I could see a bunch of the guys huddled together under a tree, the bright glare of what I assumed was a computer screen lighting their faces up in the glow.
“What the hell?” I kept the words to a low mumble, one hopefully only I heard. The moans I thought I heard from a few feet back were now growing loud
er and louder as we approached the group.
It seemed as if no one even noticed us as we sat down. They were obviously glued to the screen where the girl on girl porn was playing. “Eric swiped it from his older brother,” Shane said by way of explanation.
You could have heard a pin drop. Except for the noises coming from the computer, no one spoke. I watched on and tried my best to appear interested; though I’m pretty sure no one was paying attention to me.
Shit, if I thought my head was fucked up before this, it was even more so now. In the back of my brain, the part that was always trying to maintain the perfect cover for who I knew I really was, I couldn’t help but think this was all some kind of game. Perhaps a trick that Eric and Scott were trying to play on me after our stilted exchange of glares in the weight room the other day.
Rather than getting too ahead of myself, I sat there calmly and tried not to get too worried about being outed. Besides what did they have as proof?
You checking out another guy. That’s what they’ve got against you.
The laptop lid slamming shut shook me out of my worry. “Dude, that was fucking hot. You have to get more of those,” Ryan, one of Scott and Eric’s friends from their hometown team said as he not-so-casually grabbed at his crotch, disguising it as readjusting himself.
Without saying anything, Scott looked over his shoulder at me, his face half-hidden, half-lit by the moon. “Hot, right, Dylan?” Insinuation was thick in his words.
I didn’t think the other guys heard the accusation in what he’d just said, or the sneer in his tone, but I did. “Hell yeah, it was,” I spat out quickly, with what was hopefully not too much eagerness to seem unconvincing.
“All right, boys. It’s been real, but I’m being eaten alive out here. Damn mosquitos.” Eric swatted away an imaginary bug before adding, “I’m heading back to the room.”
Snorting through his laughter, Scott stood next to him. “Bugs, my ass. You just want to go jerk off in the shower before I get back to the room.”
“How about I race you back to the dorm and whoever gets there first gets the shower for as long as they need while the other one has to wait in the hallway?” Without even giving him a beat to react, Scott sprinted toward the dorms, leaving Eric more than a few steps behind while the rest of us stood there laughing at them.
“And that is why I’m happy to be in a single this year.” Ryan clapped his hand to my shoulder, setting me on edge even more than I had already been. “See you in the morning,” he said as he strode away from us.
The awkward silence that descended upon Shane and me as we stood there alone was crippling – at least for me.
Wordlessly, we walked back to our room. After tossing my key on the desk, I flopped back into my bed and stared up at the ceiling. “You can have the bathroom first. I’m gonna go call Reid. Check up on him.” Shane’s words clogged in his throat with some kind of unnamed emotion, one which I chose to ignore.
Shane slipped back out the door so quickly, I didn’t have any time to respond, not that I would have known what to say. Reaching for my journal, I pulled the pen out from the spiraled wire, my words flowing with more clarity than my brain was capable of.
I don’t think most people can pinpoint the actual moment they discover who they are. I mean, you hear stories all the time about people wasting their life trying to figure out their purpose, trying to figure out who they are and what they’re meant to be. I’m not going to pretend that I know all of the answers – that’d be a huge fucking lie, but I do know more about myself now than I did an hour ago.
I guess I’ve always known I was different somehow, but I just wrote it off with a million different excuses. Maybe I’m different because my parents are still happily married or because I’m an only child.
But when those excuses run out and you start thinking that you’re different because there’s something inherently ‘wrong’ with you, that’s when it gets complicated. Yeah, I know they say – whoever the hell ‘they’ are – that growing up isn’t easy, that being a sixteen-year-old boy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but I’ve known for maybe longer than I care to admit that whatever is making my life difficult, whatever is screwing me up in my head is much more than normal teenage shit.
Watching what I watched tonight only confirmed what I’ve known for probably my whole life.
I’m gay.
The door slamming shut scared the shit out of me and I quickly tossed my journal under my pillow, my heart pounding like crazy in my chest. Shane didn’t notice as he crashed his phone down on the desk angrily.
“Everything okay?” I asked as I tossed back the covers.
His fists were clenched at his side; the anger vibrated off him, filling the room with a palpable tension. “What the fuck do you think?” he roared, punching the door with rage.
I jumped off my bed as he clutched his right hand and winced in pain. “What the hell did you do that for? You’ll break your throwing hand, asshole.”
“I don’t fucking care, anymore.” Some of the bite left him, and he calmed marginally. He slinked down onto his bed, hanging his head in his hands. “It’s so fucking unfair,” he gritted, stifling back his rising emotions.
I sat next to him, far enough away to leave him some space, but close enough to let him know I was listening. “What happened? Is it Reid?”
He punched the bed with his good hand – at least both wouldn’t be broken. “No, it’s my fucking asshole father. Reid came home late the other night and dear-old-dad knocked him around a bit,” he snidely remarked as he stood from the bed, pacing the room like a caged animal. “I don’t know what the fuck to do. He’s getting out of control. At first, he would just yell at Mom. Then he would just lash out at me, smack me around a little, but now, this. Reid says he can barely open his eye; it’s so swollen.” He flopped into the chair at the desk and looked at his hand as it turned purple and swelled.
“You need to put ice on that. Let me go get it so Coach doesn’t see you.” I moved to the door as he muttered, “thanks” before I left.
In the two minutes it took me to walk down to the water cooler to grab a bag of ice, I tried to make sense of what made it okay for a father to beat his own son, but it turned out that two minutes wasn’t enough time.
I twisted the knob to our door and saw Shane sitting on my bed, my journal open and in his hands.
He looked up at me as if I was some kind of intruder, or as if he was seeing me for the first time. Considering what I was sure he’d just read, that was certainly true. “What are you doing?” Shock colored my words as I tore the spiral notebook from his bruised hand.
He looked up at me, sadness and confusion mixing on his face. “You’re gay?” he whispered as if anyone else was in the room to hear his words. Hearing Shane say it somehow made it feel more real than when I had written it, thought it, knew it in my own soul.
In the few moments it took me to answer him, I considered denying it, but there was no point. The words were messily scribbled right there on the page for him to read. I was just happy I hadn’t finished my thoughts. The ones where I wrote about how confused I was for wanting my best friend, for thinking that he was gay as well – even though I knew he would never admit to it himself.
“Yeah, I am,” I admitted sheepishly before sinking onto my bed. With my secret out in the open, there was no sense in hiding the journal any longer, but out of the habit that I had developed over the last week, I tucked it in between my mattress and box spring, even though Shane looked on.
“How? When?” he barely whispered as he scrubbed his hand over his face and through his sandy-brown hair in disbelief.
“I don’t know,” I said after taking a deep breath. “I guess I’ve always known, as cliché as that sounds.” I stood to walk over to him, but he held his hand out to stop me. “Look, I don’t want this to change things. We’re still friends, right?” I held my hands up, palms facing out in an attempt to surrender to him and his confusion.
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He didn’t say anything, just stood up and grabbed his keys from the desk. “I’m gonna go stay at Scott and Eric’s tonight.” He shut the door behind him without saying anything more.
He didn’t speak to me at all the next day, or the rest of the week, or on the two-hour car ride home, or the first day of school.
In fact, Shane didn’t speak to me for most of the next ten months, and on the first day of baseball season in the spring of our senior year, all I got from my best friend of over ten years was a subtle chin nod.
“Smile, would ya? We made the fucking playoffs.” Reid ruffled my hair and punched my arm, which was so fucking sore from the game. Throwing a two-hitter was not necessarily noteworthy as far as baseball stats were concerned, but it was the best game I had ever thrown and it won us the chance to play for the state championship in the coming weeks. I was damn proud of that and the look on Reid’s face, along with the rest of my team, helped to dull the pain.
As the trainer plastic-wrapped an ice pack to my throwing arm, I saw Dylan walk into the locker room and toss his bag on the bench. A few of the other guys followed behind him, carrying a water cooler over their shoulders. Dylan hit the game winning homerun, securing us the victory. He was the hero of the day, and an hour after the game, I still hadn’t said a word to him.
Fuck, if I’d said five words to him in the last six months that would be saying a lot. Maybe it was time to just fucking open my mouth and congratulate him.
I walked over to the other side of the locker room just in time to get a first row view to the guys dropping five gallons of ice-cold water over his head. He skyrocketed up from the bench and spun around like he’d been punched in the back of the head. Everyone laughed and he eventually calmed down enough to realize they were congratulating him – in their own weird, ice-cold way.
When the other guys moved away, Dylan caught sight of me behind them and nodded toward me. That was all we’d relegated to since camp. I walked out of our room once I found out he was gay and I never looked back.
Let Love Live Page 3
