The Locker Room (20 page)

“We….” He sighed. “We stopped. You know. Third home game of

the month. I just couldn"t do it anymore. Neither could he. It was….” Oh

God. Now that he"d put his foot down, it hurt to admit that they had ever

lived like that in the first place. “It was so wrong,” he said at last, and

now Leo sighed loud enough for it to crackle over the phone.

“Yeah,” he said after a moment. He"d known. He"d heard the buzz

that the happiness twins had finally ended their public celibacy. He"d

asked them what was up, and Xander could never decide if the

expression on his face had been incredible pride or incredible

disappointment. Maybe it had been both. “Yeah. I knew it when you

started, but… God. Compared to the other shit people do in this

business? Jesus. What made up your mind, by the way?”

Xander sighed. “I don"t want to talk about it,” he said, meaning it.

“The good news is, it never happened—no matter what she puts out on

the internet.” He didn"t think she would. In fact, he was pretty sure that

she"d blow up the picture, put it on the wall, and only tell the people who

mattered what really went on that night—but he couldn"t be positive.

There was a silence on the other end of the line, and Leo asked

tentatively, “Please tell me she was eighteen?”

110 Amy Lane

“Barely, Leo—that"s why nothing happened.” Xander flopped

backward on the comforter, bouncing his hand lightly on top of it. It was

Kings" purple, with gold trim, because it had cracked Chris up to have it

made that way, and it had made Xander laugh when he"d seen it. The

sheets and the pillows were purple and gold to match. It was raucous and

gaudy and sooo not them. That had been the point, right? Two queens

playing for the Kings? Get it?

He was having a conversation right now that wouldn"t let him

laugh about that.

“God… she was a baby, and she lived in what looked like my first

apartment, and… Christ. Christ, I"m done with lying—not to her, and not

to the media. Look, whatever happens, they can draw the conclusions

they want, but I"m not getting up and giving a press conference and

answering to any of this bullshit. Not now. Not ever again.”

Leo sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I hear you, big guy. "Kay. Look, I"ve got

your owner on call waiting, right? Whatever the fallout is? It"s about to

rain down. Go put Chris together—he"s going to need you.”

Xander stood up and went to the bathroom, wondering if he was

going to have to pull him out in the same way Chris had pulled him out

three years ago, but he needn"t have worried. Chris had shut off the

water and was drying his hair, a towel slung around his trim waist and a

little bit of life back in his eyes.

“You told Leo?”

Xander stood behind him and put his hands on his shoulders, still

soft and damp from the shower. They had some moisturizer (Chris called

it “man-sturizer”) that smelled like cedar, and Xander liked the smell. He

smoothed some on Chris"s back now, and along his neck, and over his

shoulders. Chris had never really gotten Xander"s chest-mane, so he just

sort of left his little patch of gold hair alone. Xander liked playing with

it, and teasing him about it, and he rubbed it once the bulk of the body

lotion was gone.

The tattoo, the one with Xander"s name on it, stood out in stark

relief with Chris"s silver-pale skin, and Xander"s fingers traced that

pattern, the only public proof of what had privately been a marriage

lasting nearly ten years. He was so damned proud of that. The day the

two of them had gone to get the tats had felt like their wedding day.

The Locker Room 111

They"d even gone out to dinner afterward, the bandages over their

shoulders hidden by the cut of new suits.

That day felt far away now, and Xander"s fingers tightened on

Chris"s marked shoulder.

“I told him,” he said softly into the waiting silence.

“What"d he say?”

Xander rubbed his cheek against Chris"s short hair. Maybe he

could grow it out now. He didn"t have to try to please the bastard

anymore, right?

“He said the owners were on the phone, and he"d get back to us

when they were off.”

Chris shivered, and Xander draped his bigger body completely over

his back. “So soon?” he asked, sounding as small in his voice as

Xander"s embrace made him look in the mirror.

“I don"t know how to make it slow down,” Xander said, meaning

it. “It"s like… we just kept running down the court, and now we"re in

one of those big hamster wheels and it"s going downhill without us.”

Chris smiled a little, and opened his mouth to answer, but he was

interrupted by the blare of the phone. He swallowed. “I"ll get it,” he said,

interrupting Xander as he turned around.

“I can get it.” The phone rang again.

“No, Xander, I"ll get it. Because we both know what"ll happen, and

I"m not going to make you say that to me, okay?”

Before Xander could argue, Chris had brushed past him, placing a

tentative hand on his shoulder, and picked up the phone. “Hey, Leo.

How"re they hanging?”

He was quiet after that, and too, too still. “Denver?” he said, and he

moved to the closet while he was listening. He started throwing clothes

on the bed in a random order—suits, casual, underwear, jeans, a couple

of different pairs of shoes. Xander made a strangled sound in his throat

and went to the closet to get the luggage. It was his luggage. The set that

Chris"s parents had given him and had his name and their address on it.

They both had better suitcases now, but he wasn"t sending Chris away in

anything that didn"t have his name on it.

112 Amy Lane

Tomorrow morning
, he thought painfully. Chris would be gone in

the morning.

He was wrong.

He came back with an armload of suitcases, and Chris was sitting

on the bed, looking at the handset in his hands. The conversation was

obviously over.

“Denver,” he said softly.

“I heard,” Xander said, dropping the luggage and sitting down next

to him.

Chris leaned against him, boneless, and for the moment, beaten.

“The plane leaves in three hours.”

“Fuck.”

“Leo called the town car—”

“I"ll take you!” God. Wasn"t that the least Xander could do?

Chris shook his head, still looking at his hands. “No, baby. I don"t

want you driving back alone.”

“Fuck that,” Xander whispered. Just like when he was a kid, when

he was living in that little apartment, just himself and his couch, he was

afraid of voicing anything out loud. If he shouted too loud, his mother

would hear him. If he shouted too loud, the authorities would know.

Sometimes, when he"d been in that room, by himself, huddled under his

blanket without heat and trying to sleep, he would bury his face into that

old musty couch and scream, just scream and scream and scream, until

his throat was raw and he"d exhausted any of his fear or his panic or his

hunger into the sweaty-breathed, ugly plaid-covered stuffing, and had no

choice but to sleep.

He stood up and started to pace, not bearing to look at Chris, hardly

bearing to think about him, not there in their bed that night.

“Fuck that,” he said more loudly, stronger. He wasn"t that kid

anymore. He wasn"t. He had some control here, dammit. He wasn"t cold,

or hungry, or about to disappear. Chris would miss him if he didn"t man

up. He needed to man up.

“Fuck that!” he shouted, and then something shattered across the

far wall. He looked down at his hand, and then looked at the dent that the

The Locker Room 113

lotion bottle had made when it had shattered against the gold-painted

wall.

“Xander?”

Xander took his concentration from the dent and the scattered

lotion and blindly sought Chris, who was still sitting on the bed. “Yeah?”

“You can come in the town car, right? It"ll take you home.”

Xander nodded. “But… you….”

He was standing up, across the room, and suddenly, it was like he

could see the entire span of the Sierras between them, and the Rockies as

well.

Chris started to talk rapidly, maybe to calm him down, or maybe to

get it all out, Xander wasn"t sure. “You come with me to drop me off.

Leo said he was going to call my folks, and then maybe you can all come

back here, you know? So you don"t have to be alone.”

“And you?” Xander asked, thinking about Chris alone in a hotel

room. His stomach started to knot and roil, and he rubbed it uneasily.

“You"re going to be alone… I mean, we"ve done it before, Chris, but…

this is until the end of the season. I mean… we"ll have breaks….”

Yeah. They"d have breaks.

“He can"t control what we do during the breaks, right? We"ve been

quiet, there"s no reason for the press to start hounding us now, right? I

mean….” Xander looked around frantically, at the little corner of the

house where their heart seemed to live.

“Chris, this is your
home.
How can they make you leave your

home? Why didn"t they make me leave… why does it have to be you! I

can think of you here, and it"s okay, right? It"s okay, because your family

is here, and they"ll take care of you, but who"s going to take care of you

in Denver? Christ, you remember, we drove across the Rocky Mountains

that one summer—those people don"t believe in guard rails, Chris—how

are they going to take care of you—”

“Shh… sh… sh….”

Suddenly Chris was there, in his arms, rubbing his back, and

Xander wrapped his arms around him, making him small, making him fit

into Xander"s outsized body, and Chris kept shushing him. It was absurd,

Xander thought, feeling like he was in that box and the box had been

114 Amy Lane

dropped off a cliff. They were grown men, being transferred was part of

the business. But as Chris disentangled himself and started to explain

that it would be fine, Leo would be there to help him sign papers, and

that it was only until the end of the season, and that they would

reevaluate their contracts then, Xander came to a very sudden, abrupt

realization.

They couldn"t be grown-ups if they were faking it. There was a

reason for the hoopla and the two people in the center of attention,

announcing to the world that they were going to, by golly, be grown-ups

for the whole rest of the world to see. There was a reason for the

traditions and the music and the flowers and the celebration. There was a

reason to make God a witness and to say vows and all that shit that

seemed damned silly if you were two men who stood over six feet tall

and didn"t like attention and just wanted to live your life in peace.

The world didn"t know you meant it, unless you made it official.

“I can"t do this,” he said into the blue. “I can"t just watch you get

on a plane and leave our home. I—”

“If you say you quit, I"ll knee you in the balls!” Chris growled, the

life slamming back into his eyes, his posture, his voice. “Your whole life

you worked for this season—”

“To be with you!”

“And it"s my dream too, dammit!” Chris cried, pulling on his

slacks and dashing his hand across his eyes. “You, you"re always so

generous, giving the whole rest of the world the ball, making the shot for

the rest of us, carrying the damned team on your back!
You"re a fucking

act of God, Xander!
And you
love
what you do. Just once… even if it"s

just this season, and after that we quit the game, tell them all to fuck off

and die and we"re who we want to be, but just once—you have got to be

the star. You are
not
a little boy alone in the box, and the whole world

loves
you, and you
deserve it,
dammit, because you and me, we have

sacrificed and we have worked and we have
earned
everything we have

here, and
you
have earned it too!”

“But I wanted it for you too!” And oh, how he had. He"d wanted

the two of them together on the court, like two parts of the same engine,

because that"s when he knew he"d never be alone again.

The Locker Room 115

“You want to do something for me?” Chris asked, his voice thick

and his face turned away. “You really want to do something for me?”

“Anything!” Xander begged. Anything. He would always do

anything for Chris.

“Then you kiss me goodbye at the airport, and keep our home nice

for when I can come back, and then… Xander, you go play your heart

out, you hear me? You go be a superstar, and you stop feeding your