Playing for the Other Team (19 page)

The weird rumor about Fletcher and me had apparently gained speed over the weekend, because when I came to school on Monday, there was even more pointing and whispering and giggling than I had received after Trip had announced crudely to an entire hallway full of people that Jasper and I were an item. I took it in stride. Maybe it wasn’t technically a good thing that I was getting so used to being talked about, but at least it allowed me to focus on my classes. The rest was just background noise.

In fact, everything went perfectly fine, apart from a few comments that made me desperately wish for the invention of brain bleach, until I used the restroom after third hour, washed my hands, and turned, just to be shoved into the sink, which hurt. Some guy I was vaguely familiar with glared at me. I knew he was on the basketball team, one of Fletcher’s friends, the crowd who called each other “bro” and girls “bitches.”

Basketbro tried to follow his action with a punch, but I could tell he wasn’t much of a fighter. Granted, neither was I, but I still managed to get out of the way enough that all I collected was a throbbing but still for the most part unblemished nose.

“That’s for Fletcher, you fucker,” the basketbro snarled. “For telling everyone he’s fucking gay!”

“I didn’t.”

“The hell you didn’t!”

“Dude,” a familiar voice called out, and a stall door slammed. “Get lost!”

Basketbro wheeled around, flipped the bird, and stomped out of the bathroom in a huff.

“What a fucktard,” Trip said. When I turned, he was standing there with his arms crossed and a big scowl on his face. “So, is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“What everyone is saying about you and”—he pulled a face—“Fletcher.”

“No,” I said. “Jasper’s ex made that up.”

I was certain I wasn’t imagining the hint of relief that flicked over Trip’s features. Seeing it, I allowed myself to relax slightly. Given how things had been between us the last time I’d seen him, I still wasn’t sure what to expect, however.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Trip asked. He was looking down now and sounded…dejected.

“Tell you what?”

“That you’re gay, Bry.” Trip’s hands clenched and unclenched as he stared rigidly at the grubby floor. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you ever explain?” He glanced up at me and then back down so quickly I was barely able to register it. “I feel like an idiot,” he mumbled. “All those times I set you up with girls, and you never said… Guess you were laughing at me the whole time, huh?”

“What?” My confusion was now complete.

“
Didn’t
you think it was funny?” Trip finally looked at me again—a cool, challenging glare. “That I was too stupid to realize you were… I mean, I figured you’d have told me something like that, like, years ago, but that whole time we were friends and you just, what? Decided I didn’t deserve to know? Thought I was too dumb to understand?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in an attempt to clear my head. It was not a particularly successful maneuver.

“Okay, no,” I said. “Dude, that’s…none of that.” I didn’t even know how to start handling that unexpected pile of angst he had just shoved my way.

“Well, at the very least, you didn’t trust me.” There was a shuffling noise, like he was dragging his feet across the tiles. “But, I mean, I guess I can’t fault you for that.”

My eyes popped back open out of sheer surprise. Trip, introspective? That was new.

“Yeah, you didn’t exactly…react well,” I managed.

“I know.” He blinked several times in quick succession again. “I…I just wanted the rest of the year to kick ass for us, and I had it all figured out, all the fun we were gonna have. And now it’s all…” He swallowed. “All fucked up.”

I was out of words. I had no clue how to respond to that.

“I guess it just…sucks that you couldn’t trust me,” Trip said.

“I didn’t
know
,” I pointed out softly.

“How the—how can you not know that? That just sounds like bullshit. How the hell is that even supposed to work, Bry?”

Tough question, since I was still busy figuring all of that out myself. I chewed my lip, considering my words carefully, because Trip and I were finally talking without him hurling insults at me, and even though he had outed me at school and I probably shouldn’t be forgiving that so easily…it was Trip. He did mean something to me, despite all his faults.

“I never loved anyone before. Girls were never that interesting, but I thought I just hadn’t found the right one yet, you know? I thought maybe everyone feels like that until it finally clicks with someone. You always seemed to want me to try, so…I tried. I dated. I kept waiting for it to feel different, but I never realized I was trying the wrong thing. And I never let myself look at guys that way. Living with my uncle…it fucked with my head, I think. I never thought being gay was wrong. I was so sure all that hate he was throwing at me wouldn’t stick, but I don’t know, part of me picked it up subconsciously, I guess. I thought it was fine that other people were gay, but I was convinced that
I
couldn’t be gay, for some stupid reason. It sounds dumb, but…” I shrugged.

“No, that, um, that kind of makes sense, I think. I’m sorry I…overreacted.” Trip looked like he had a toothache as he said it, but afterward he seemed relieved to have gotten the words out.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” He sounded doubtful.

I wasn’t sure how to respond. His apology wasn’t going to magically fix things, but I had to admit it was more than I had expected from him. Trip had never been exactly thoughtful. Then again, he had also never been purposely vicious. He wasn’t a bad guy, never had been. I knew that much for sure.

“Do you know you’re bleeding?” Trip asked.

“Huh?” I stared blankly until he came up and grasped my face with both hands. When he turned it, I finally noticed that my nose was bleeding. A few droplets had made it all the way to the floor.

“Fucker just scratched you.” Trip ripped a paper towel from the dispenser, wet it, and took it to my nose to scrub it clean. He wasn’t particularly gentle about it, but I appreciated the gesture.

He hunched as he glanced at my face. “So, um, you love him, huh? That guy, Jasper?”

“Yes. That a problem?”

He shook his head and lowered his gaze.

Well, at least that was something.

“Um.” Trip dropped my arm and tossed the paper towel in the general direction of the trash can. He missed. “I should get back to help Elle, I guess. I’m her partner in this dumb French project.”

“Yeah.” I frowned at him as something occurred to me. “How are you two doing?”

Trip choked down a sound that sounded very much like a bitter laugh. “Well, she hates me. That’s pretty much all there is to it.”

I knew him well enough to be able to see how much it was bothering him, his expression barely holding up as he slunk past me out of the bathroom.

* * * *

I saw Jasper briefly before practice. When I turned out of the hallway that housed my locker, I saw him standing near the main office with his mother and sister, obviously waiting for the appointment with Barron. Lisa was scowling and seemed ready to tear our vice principal a new one. Missy looked equally vicious. Today she was wearing a pale yellow sundress that was so cute it made her look like a life-size doll. The neon-pink sneakers didn’t match the dress at all, but Missy had put pink ribbons in her hair and pink bracelets on her wrists, presumably to tie the look together. I had high hopes that the vice principal would buckle under the Reyes women’s onslaught.

“Hope you give that douche hell,” I said and hugged Jasper quickly.

Missy stared at me. “Well,
obviously
.”

“I don’t know how long this is going to take,” Jasper said. “When does baseball practice end?”

“Five,” I told him.

“You want me to stick around and wait for you to finish?” His question was innocent, but the look he gave me under long, dark lashes certainly wasn’t. My mind flashed back to the night before, to what we’d done, and a sort of heat shot through my body that had nothing to do with the weather.

“Um,” I said, “if it’s not gonna be too boring.”

“Nah. I have homework to catch up on.”

“You’re still doing homework?”

He shrugged. “English and history, yeah. I like reading stuff. Is that somehow a bad thing?”

“Of course not. See you later, then.” I kissed his temple and waved at Lisa and Missy before hurrying over to the varsity locker room.

Several of the guys I played baseball with had been surprisingly cool about my coming out, like Raymond, for example, an undeniably popular player on the team. Add Trip to that, who was suddenly talking to me again, and the mood during practice was positively uplifting. When I hit a particularly smooth home run, which didn’t happen all that often, the guys slapped my ass just as enthusiastically as they would have several weeks ago. Suddenly I felt like, despite purple-haired jerks spreading rumors, everything might just turn out okay.

And then, just at the end of practice, when we were all about to return to the locker room, two people came walking across the field and up to Coach Miller, and that was all it took for me to get a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. It got worse when I recognized the track and basketball coach, Coach Brown, and the basketbro I had encountered earlier in the bathroom. They talked, and a moment later, Coach Miller waved me closer while he dismissed the rest of the team with a sweeping gesture.

“Bryson,” he said, “apparently there’s a problem. Derek here says you threatened him earlier today.”

You have got to be kidding me.

“No,” I said, “I didn’t. Not even after he tried to punch me.”

“Any witnesses to that?” Coach Miller asked. He was generally a very fair guy, unlike Coach Brown, who considered his athletes to be saints and everyone else jealous pieces of crap.

“Trip,” I said.

“How convenient,” said Coach Brown. Coach Miller ignored him.

“Any witnesses to the threats?” he asked.

“John and Fletcher,” Basketbro said promptly.

“Well,” Coach Miller pointed out, “that’s also convenient.”

“My boys don’t lie,” Coach Brown growled.

“Neither do mine.”

The coaches glared at each other. Basketbro scowled, and I stood there awkwardly, waiting for the situation to be resolved while I calmed myself.

There was no way Derek would be able to sell his lies to anyone but Coach Brown. And since Brown wasn’t my coach, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Unless getting me in trouble wasn’t the point of the exercise.

And then I remembered Jasper, who was sitting somewhere doing homework while he waited for me and who was amazing and so, so vulnerable right now.

“Can we please talk about this some other time?” I asked. “I kinda have to be somewhere.”

The look I gave Coach Miller was a pleading one, and I did that because I knew he’d never seen me look like that before. He would understand it was serious.

“Right,” he said. “Since it’s your word against Derek’s, there’s really not much we can do about it right now. Go ahead. I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.”

“Whatever,” I heard the basketbro mutter petulantly as I was already running off the diamond.

I couldn’t find Jasper near the locker room, and that was like a punch to the gut. Running frantically through the now empty hallways, I called his name, looked in every classroom I passed. I hoped he had just gone home. Eventually I returned to the locker room and searched that too. It was empty, just like everything else. The rest of my team had already left.

“Finally,” someone said behind me.

I turned around just in time to see Fletcher and register the fact that his face was twisted with anger. He came at me like a charging bull and rammed his shoulder painfully into my midsection. My breath left me, and I was unable to make a sound when Fletcher pushed me to the floor. Even though I was disoriented, I managed to roll away before he could pin me down. I hit a wall and used it to pull myself to my feet.

“What the fuck?” I shouted, more than irritated. “What the—”

His fist hit my face straight-on. Everything went black for a moment, and someone screamed. It might have been me. I felt my numb body collapse back onto the floor while throbbing pain radiated out from my left cheekbone. I’d never been hit like that before. The shock and pain stunned me into motionlessness.

“That’s for spreading those rumors,” Fletcher roared, hurting my ears. Everything had suddenly become very bright and blaring. He kicked my shoulder, and that was when I realized that his boots had goddamn steel caps in them. He put his foot on my upper arm, seized my wrist, and pulled, and when that didn’t do much apart from making my arm feel like a stretched, limp noodle, he kicked my ribs repeatedly. There was the most awful crunch-pop that reverberated through my body, and I screamed, screamed so hard in rage and absolute pain.

“I’m gonna kill you!” Fletcher snarled. “You and your little boyfriend, I’m gonna kill you both for this!”

Not Jasper. Not Jasper. The awful sensation of a dull bread knife trying to saw apart my chest was bad enough, but Fletcher touching Jasper at all would slay me. I feebly shook my head and was rewarded with another ringing blow that rendered half of my face completely numb. Then another. My eyes watered. I wondered how long this had been going on. Time had slipped away from me shortly after the first blow, and I had no idea if this had taken seconds or minutes. Surely someone was still around? One of the coaches had to be, I thought. They needed to lock up the athletics complex.

Another blow—or were they kicks?—scattered the thoughts and replaced them with curl-up-and-die agony.

“You fucker!” someone screamed, and I recognized the voice and wanted to shout something—
be careful
, maybe—but I couldn’t seem to
move.

Why was I lying on the floor?

This was stupid.

I needed to help Jasper before…

Before…

Chapter Sixteen

Everything’s Bruised, Including My Ego