Playing for the Other Team (2 page)

Not everybody had been pleased with the solution, but I had to admit it was kind of nice to be able to go for a swim right in the middle of prom night. And it was definitely a plus that not everyone had to spend the night in the same stupid room dancing to the same stupid music. The stoners, I was certain, had already discovered a spot on the roof or a similarly suitable location to be about their business. Earlier, I’d glimpsed the pep squad putting on a performance in one of the basketball courts. The track team had congregated by the climbing wall. And I had quiet.

I sat down on the stairs, held my head in my hands, and tried to calm the hell down. Here, the music was dampened, which I appreciated because my ears were ringing, and the cold granite beneath me gave me a strange but comforting sense of grounding.

Damn it. This was not going at all the way I had expected it to. I was overwhelmed, desperately fighting against something I didn’t understand. And clearly I was losing.

The door behind me—the one I had come in through—opened after an undetermined amount of time. I’d lost track completely, just sitting there staring at my shaking hands. Instead of turning and looking, I froze. Answering anyone’s nosy questions wasn’t on my to-do list right then.

Just go past. Ignore me.

“Hi.”

Dread and exhilaration flooded me at the sound of that low, silky voice. I didn’t so much as glance at Jasper, but I knew he was standing there, calm and beautiful and distant. And it was killing me.

“Hi,” I responded tonelessly.

It struck me at that moment that Jasper and I had never had a conversation before. Ever. Oh, sure, there was the occasional “pass me the watercolors” in class, but these requests were always carefully impersonal on both our parts. I only ever listened in on him talking to other people—which was rare enough—as I tried not to let him catch me watching him work.

He was a creator. His mind and hands could turn any raw material, any blank canvas, into something beautiful. I’d seen it happen so many times throughout the past semester. Given his skill, his attention to detail, it had been an exercise in futility to try and keep my eyes away from whatever he worked on.

But we had never talked. And right now that felt like the biggest regret of my life.

He didn’t seem to share said regret. I heard the slight rustle of fabric as he shifted, and then his steps echoed through the stairwell as he slowly walked past me, laid his hand on the handrail, and descended the steps one by one.

I swallowed hard. Suddenly it seemed important to tell Jasper…well, something. Not everything. But I longed to get him to understand that he was not just a random face in the crowd to me. I opened my mouth and tried to find the words, any words, except there didn’t seem to be any that would even come close to saying what I needed them to say.

Jasper reached the bottom of the flight of stairs, turned to go down the next flight, and saw my face when he glanced up. His eyes met mine. The next moment, my entire body thrummed as though I were a church bell and Jasper the clapper that had just struck me and set me to ringing.

“Is something wrong?”

He’d cocked his head. The polite concern written on his face made me want to scream. He was looking at me like I was just some random jock, nothing more, and…oh shit, what if I was? What if he’d long since stopped seeing me as anything but?

“I’m scared,” I blurted out, both because it was the truth and because I would have said anything just then to stop that painful train of thought.

His eyes were still fixated on me. Most likely he was expecting me to elaborate, which would have been the logical thing to do, but I couldn’t. Just couldn’t.

“Oh,” he said eventually. I watched through slightly blurred eyes as he shifted, then took his hand off the rail again. “Do you need help?” He asked the question with a note of hesitation, as though doubting how much help he could be to me, or maybe wondering what sort of bizarre problem he was offering to involve himself in. I wished fervently that I could just say yes and get him to stay just a little while longer, but that was just about the worst idea—

“Yes.” I heard my own voice with incredulity. “Please,” I added to chase away an inexplicable feeling of rudeness.

Very slowly, he nodded and backtracked up the stairs. When he had nearly reached me, he sat, still looking wary and a little confused. I couldn’t blame him.

“So what’s wrong?” he asked, and his stunning eyes met mine again, and suddenly the compulsion to speak hit me like a sledgehammer.

“I think I’m gay.”

There was a moment of complete silence. Then I cringed and hid my hot face in my hands, feeling utterly horrified. “Oh
hell
.”

He made a small sound, something like a quiet, breathy “oh.” I couldn’t focus on it at all.

I hadn’t meant to say it. I’d never even thought it, not consciously, as though it wouldn’t be real until I acknowledged it. Stupid, but necessary to my overwhelmed sense of self-preservation. I wasn’t ready to let it be real. Yet there it was.

Jesus. What the fuck would I do now?

“It’s okay, Bryson. It’s all right.” His voice was so ridiculously calm that a small, aggravated, and overly aggressive part of me wanted to smack him.

“It’s not all right.” I still had my face hidden in my hands, so the words came out muffled, and I couldn’t see his reaction. But a second later, he rested his hand lightly on my back.

“But it is. Really. And I’m not going to tell anyone.”

That was nice, but it did nothing to make me feel better. In fact, I was getting worse by the second. There was no way for me to un-realize this. And on top of everything, the simple touch of his warm hand on my back did things to me that I really didn’t want to have to deal with right now.

I stood abruptly, regretting the loss of his touch.

“I need to… I’m sorry, I… Thanks for the…”

Without finishing any of my sentences or giving him a chance to reply, I fled down the stairs. My mind spun like an out-of-control carnival ride.

This is not happening.

I take it back.

Please let me take it back.

For several minutes, while I navigated the stairs and then the ground floor, I was afraid I might throw up. My skin was slick with cold sweat. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never, ever come out again.

I grabbed my bag out of the locker I’d chosen upon arrival and made my way to the pool, completely on autopilot. Because I hadn’t had the foresight to bring a hanger for my tux, I folded it carefully after changing into my swim trunks. Then I entered the humid pool area, dropped my stuff, and went to join Trip, Elle, and—I groaned inwardly—Nova Phillips.

She was gorgeous; I had to give her that. Tall, slim, with long blonde hair and full lips, the sort of girl most guys wouldn’t hesitate to get close to. Of course, I had, not five minutes ago, officially admitted to myself that I wasn’t most guys.

The thought of it made me feel ill again.

“Bryson! About time!” Elle splashed water at me, breaking me out of my dark thoughts. “Get in here.”

I did. Ten seconds later, I had Nova clinging to me.

“Hey, Bry.” She smiled, and I tried to look enthusiastic.

“Uh, hey. Hi, Nova.”

“Are you having a good time?”

God no
. But I couldn’t very well tell her that, so I gritted my teeth and gave her a smile. “Of course. You?”

“It’s much better now.” I noticed her leg sliding against mine in the water. She tightened her grip on my neck and pulled me closer. I felt her breath on my cheek.

Crap.

The parent volunteers assigned to supervise the pool area were sitting at its other end, chatting with each other, and were paying us no attention at all. From the corner of my eye, I could see Trip watching me. I knew he was expecting me to take full advantage of the situation. The idea made me supremely uncomfortable, but at the same time…

I take it back.

Could I?

Reluctantly, I put my hands on Nova’s waist. She responded by squirming against me, her breasts brushing my chest. She really was pretty, but my dick barely stirred at all at the contact.

“You want to find someplace a little more private?” she murmured into my ear. Before I could reply, she was already steering me through the pool. It wasn’t one of the boring rectangular ones, but one designed for fun and play, with waterfalls and small passages and what-have-you. It was an easy feat for Nova to maneuver us out of sight. Pushing me up against a wall, she apparently decided that we had wasted enough time already. Her hand went straight to my crotch.

A gasp escaped me, born more of surprise than excitement. I wondered what would happen if I didn’t get hard at all, whether Nova would figure out the reason. But despite the awkward situation, my body eventually reacted to the mechanical stroking, causing me to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Mmmh,” Nova murmured. She pulled her hand away, and then I felt her fingers slip into my swim trunks. She found my bare flesh, gripped it tightly, and for the second time tonight I felt like I might throw up.

This felt so
wrong.

I’d figured I’d be able to go through with it, let her do what she wanted to do. I’d pulled it off before. But now that I was conscious of why I wasn’t enjoying myself, I just plain couldn’t do it.

Couldn’t.

Fuck.

Nova was stroking me so hastily it was almost painful with the water all around. After several attempts, I managed to grab her wrist.

Her head snapped up, and she leaned away from me. “What?”

“I’ve had too much to drink.” I was stone sober, actually, but it was the best excuse I could come up with. “Look, let’s do a rain check. Later, okay? Uh…when I feel better.”

She actually rolled her eyes.

“Can’t promise I’ll have time for you later, Bry,” she informed me flippantly as she pushed herself away from me. “But, fine. At least you’re not throwing up on me.”

Yay?

I mumbled an apology and scrambled to the edge of the pool. Ignoring Trip calling my name, I made my way back to the showers. My entire body was numb with shame, embarrassment, fear. While I rinsed off, a single pervasive thought occupied my mind.

I really am gay, aren’t I?

Well, fuck.

So now what was I supposed to do?

Chapter Two

A Beginner’s Guide To Gay

I was still shaking madly as I changed into the jeans and T-shirt I had brought along. The shock of it all was only now sinking in, the realization that I had just, without meaning to, taken a step that could not be reversed—no matter how hard I tried.

I walked through the center in a daze. All around me, people were having fun, dancing, talking, making out in dark corners. There were not nearly enough parent volunteers present to keep an eye on everyone in the building. A group of girls were playing volleyball in their prom dresses, heels and all.

I eventually spotted Jasper in the middle of a group of artsy students and band geeks who had laid claim to a racquetball court and were socializing there. He still seemed to be having a good time, talking and laughing. Rayna was clinging to his arm, snuggling into his shoulder, and he let it happen with a smile on his face. It was painful to watch.

His eyes flicked toward me, and I hastily turned and moved on. Mentally, I damned him for doing this to me, over and over again.

While I walked, I allowed my thoughts to wander. I actually remembered the day I had first met Jasper, back in eighth grade. It had been in January—I’d been preoccupied praying for a snow day when I had entered English class.

“New guy,” someone’s voice had announced, and I’d had to turn my head in all directions before spotting the unassuming dark-haired boy just staring at the floor, with his shoulders hunched and his hands clenching the straps of his backpack. New guy hadn’t said anything to any of us, not even to the teacher who greeted and introduced him. He’d just waited to be dismissed before quietly finding a seat in the back of the room.

Much later, I had found out that Jasper’s family had moved in the middle of the year because he had been bullied at his old middle school. It was not a surprising revelation, given his timid demeanor, though at the time I hadn’t thought much of it. We only had one class together—English—and he was so good at staying under the radar that I never really noticed him at all.

And then one day near the end of the school year, the boy who never said anything had walked past me after class, pressed a piece of paper into my hand, and fled so fast that it was almost comical.

During math class, I had finally flattened out the paper on top of my notebook with unbridled curiosity as to what Jasper could possibly have to tell me. To say that it wasn’t what I expected was a bit of an understatement.

Don’t be mad at me, please
, he had written in fine, flowing letters.
But I just wanted to tell you that I think you are very beautiful.

I’d had to fight the eight hundred emotions that had risen up within me all at once. Most prominently, there was surprise that Jasper even had the guts to tell me this. Panic that he might…
like
me. The realization that this was possibly why he had been bullied. Fear that my classmates would think
I
was gay if they read the note. Disgust, my uncle’s words ringing in my ears:
Fucking faggots should all be shot. Perverts. Filth.

And, somewhere deep inside me, so quiet that I barely even noticed it:
Beautiful? He really thinks I’m beautiful?

I had never said anything about the letter, to Jasper or anyone else. My uncle—the closest thing I had to a father figure—had passed away from cancer only months later, in the late summer, ending the steady litany of hate I had been exposed to for so long. It had taken me some time to convince myself that it was all right, and then one day I’d taken the letter from the drawer I’d tossed it into and read it again. And I had felt flattered. Warm.

And I’d told myself that it didn’t mean anything, that it didn’t matter who had written it. It only made me feel good because it was a nice compliment.