The Locker Room (23 page)

between the terrible calls and the freak three-point shot by Robert Horry.

The Locker Room 127

Jesus… Chris had been in tears. Xander had needed to take him out to

the hoop in front of the garage and play one-on-one, just to make him

feel better. It had been before their first breathless kiss, and the only

thing between them had been their desperate need to make the ball sweep

through the net, and their joy of moving their bodies, sweating in the late

May darkness.

“You"re it, boy. You and Edwards were going to take us there.

Now I don"t know what bug crawled up their ass about Edwards, but

you"re who we"ve got. And you"re good. Not as good as the two of you

combined, but… but you can do it alone. Everyone can see it. It"s nice of

you to play with the team, and the team appreciates it—but you"re it.

You"re our Magic, our Larry Bird. You"re our guy. You just need to stop

kicking shit and falling down!”

Xander smiled faintly, and blinked hard. “Thanks,” he said softly,

not knowing how to respond to all that other bullshit. He got out there

and he played. That"s what he did. When he was on the court, the ball

made sense, he knew where shit went, and he could make the world into

his place. It did not make him special—it just made him safe.

Malloy seemed to know he hadn"t gotten very far. He patted

Xander"s shoulder and told him to “hang tough,” and then left him to his

shower.

When Xander got home, Chris wasn"t there. Obvious, but that

didn"t make it hurt any less.

Lucia was in their room, wordlessly cleaning up the lotion mess on

the wall, and Xander had a moment to think that maybe he needed to

find something better to do with his temper. Wasn"t that a girl thing?

Breaking shit on walls? God, one minute he was all congratulating

himself on his adult decisions, and the next he was a whining, tantrum-

throwing girl. How in the hell did that happen?

Lucia looked at him as he came into the room and started hunting

for his “home sweats,” the ones that no one saw unless they lived in the

house, and sighed.

“You want to tell me what happened?” she asked quietly. “Or am I

just the help?”

“You"re a friend,” Xander told her, still rifling through his drawers.

“You"re a friend, and a confidante, and Chris got transferred and I got

128 Amy Lane

pissed, and apparently I throw stuff when I"m pissed. That"s what I do.

Watch out, I almost killed our coach with a basketball. I"m dangerous,

need to remove myself—”

“You"re not fooling anyone, you know!” she said. “Miss Penny,

she told me she"s moving in. Chris called, he told me to worry about

you—”

“Okay, that"s it!” Xander shouted. “Who"s babysitting him!”

“And Mr. Leo, he"s in the front room, waiting to see how you"re

doing.”

Oh fuck. Xander hadn"t even seen him.

“Christ,” Xander swore. “I"m fine! I"m fine! I"m fine!” He was

changing, and it wasn"t until he"d gotten his jeans off and pulled on his

sweats and then sat down to re-lace his tennis shoes that he realized that

he"d just given his housekeeper an eyeful. He looked up at her with big

eyes, and she was pretending not to notice.

“You"re wonderful, Mr. Karcek. You"re amazing. You have the

body of a Greek god. It"s your heart that"s laying in a thousand tiny

pieces.”

“AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!”

Xander went thundering down the stairs, ignoring the pain in his

foot. He hardly paused at the bottom, where Leo was lounging on the

couch. Jesus, he"d thrown his workout bag right next to the guy.

Leo arched a sculpted ginger-colored eyebrow at him. “Feeling a

touch distracted, Xander?”

Xander grunted, reached into his battered, licensed, franchise bag,

and pulled out his battered, licensed franchise ball. Without another word

he ran out the front door to the regulation-sized half court that he and

Chris had installed in their driveway, and started doing two point/three

point/half court drills. Free throw line, shoot, retrieve the ball, run to the

half court, back to the three-point line, shoot, retrieve the ball, run to the

half court, shoot, retrieve the ball, run back to the half court, then back to

the free throw line, shoot… and so on. It was mindless, it was

mechanical, it was Emily Dickinson"s poetry, where the secrets of the

universe were encapsulated in body and motion, sweat and breath,

physicality and physics, and best of all, he could do it alone.

The Locker Room 129

He drilled for an hour, and it began to rain, and he continued. The

court became slippery, and his vision was blurred, and his eyes stung

with sweat and rain and maybe something else, but he was damned if

he"d stop. His foot settled into a steady, aching, swollen throb, and he

ignored it, because everything was just so pure out there with the ball in

his hands. It was so simple, so easy. Hands up, sight your shot, shoot, run

the play, score again. He could do it for hours.

He did it for two hours. Leo came out in a trench coat with an

umbrella and told him that his lips were blue, and he said “So the fuck

what!” Leo turned around and left.

He did it for three hours. He couldn"t see the basket in the dark,

and barely noticed when the all-purpose light snapped on overhead. His

muscles trembled and his knees ached, and his foot was a bloody ring of

fire, but every step had the whole of his heart in it, and every shot had his

every concentration, and every run back was the run of a man pursued by

a legion, at least, of hell"s nastiest demons, the ones calling him a faggot,

and telling him that what he"d had in his life for the least twelve years

hadn"t been real, not real at all.

He was in his fourth hour when Leo came out again, trench coat

collecting new water droplets on its matte gray water-repellent exterior,

matching umbrella held close to his chest because the wind had picked

up. He was shouting something, but Xander didn"t want to hear it, so he

ran past the half court, ran even into the bushes, and sighted the place he

wanted to dunk from, as though everything in his body wasn"t shaking

with exhaustion and dehydration and cold.

Leo placed himself right in front of that spot, and was yelling at the

top of his lungs, and Xander couldn"t hear him over his own labored

breathing, and, dammit, he didn"t want to stop. Didn"t want to stop.

Didn"t want to stop. The sound of the ball splattering with each dribble

started to eclipse the tortured breath roaring through his lungs, and his

stride lengthened and his body flew, and he had a vision of Leo"s eyes

growing as big as basketballs when he realized what Xander intended.

Xander had to give it to the little guy, he didn"t move. He just

dropped to a crouch at the last moment as Xander vaulted right over him,

legs scissoring to give him air, and threw the ball straight into the

dripping net from the height of his chest. He grabbed onto the rim there,

130 Amy Lane

suspended, not wanting to come down because it was as close to flying

as he could get without a hang glider on his shoulders, and then the

muscles in his arms gave out and he came crashing to the ground. He

lucked out, because his knees couldn"t hold him, and they gave as his

feet touched down. He rolled to his back, howling triumph and

exhaustion and pain and rage, until his body was too spent for even that,

and he simply rolled sideways and stayed, panting, in the water running

off the court.

A pair of patent leather dress shoes interrupted his vision, and then

Leo"s face, dripping water and still a bit wide-eyed, as he crouched down

to see if Xander was still living.

“Happy with yourself?” he asked dryly, and Xander swallowed and

nodded.

“Ecstatic,” he muttered, and Leo rolled his eyes.

“Chris plays in about five minutes,” he said. “I thought, you know,

you might want to snap out of your self-pity and everything, because the

guy called to make sure you"d be watching.”

Xander closed his eyes. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Is it really that late?”

Leo let out a string of curse words, some of which Xander hadn"t

heard since high school, and others that he was pretty sure Leo had no

personal experience with whatsoever. He finished with, “Man, are you

going to get up and go dry off and warm up or something, or do I have to

call the fucking paramedics?”

“Don"t be a drama queen, Leona,” Xander mumbled. “Just give me

a hand up, willya?”

It took more than a hand up—Xander actually had to lean on Leo"s

shoulder, because his foot, given some sign that the punishment was

about to end, decided to bitch like a prom queen on the rag. Xander

asked Leo if he could get the pain meds out of his bag while Xander

went up and took the world"s fastest shower—or so he planned. It took

him a while, because his hands were too damned cold for small shit, like

taking off his socks, or fumbling with the handles on the shower.

When he came gimping down the stairway ten minutes later,

holding onto the rail because his knees wouldn"t hold his weight and his

body was just too exhausted to move, Leo had the DVR on pause and

The Locker Room 131

had put together a tray of leftovers that Lucia had left for him, as well as

some hot chocolate.

Xander was too tired to even complain that the hot chocolate was

for a little kid. He felt like a little kid. The last time he could remember

feeling this completely wrecked, had been—

Oh shit. Surfing, on their way to Chapel Hill. Xander actually had

to fight back a sob, and he was angry with himself for even thinking it.

All of that work, all of that hard work, to not think about sleeping in that

bed without Chris—for damned near the next six months.

Leo gave him the remote, and he pressed play while his body

started to demand he shovel food down his throat in record quantities.

About halfway through, as the pre-game ended and the lights and music

started, he remembered to stop for his painkiller. At his whimper of relief

when he downed it, Leo grabbed the remote, pressed pause, and then

looked down at his bare foot, propped up on the big glossy black coffee

table that went with the leather couches and cream pale rug and giant

front bay window that curved around the front of the house as it faced

the lake.

His toe was almost as black as the coffee table, and Leo made a

little moan when he saw it.

“Press play,” Xander mumbled. “Chris was about ready to come

out.”

“What in the fuck did you do?” Leo asked harshly, and Xander

didn"t want to talk about it. Leo pulled his arm back with the remote

control, though, in a tight little concentrated fist, and Xander"s eyebrows

raised as he realized that Leo probably had the power to pitch the thing

through that big glass window from the couch.

“Don"t look so surprised, Superstar—I pitched in the minors for

three years after college, and it was my knees that fucked me over, not

my elbows. Now I will throw this thing into the goddamned lake if you

don"t tell Uncle Leo what in the fuck happened to that prime piece of

real estate parked on the fucking coffee table!”

Xander swore and leaned his head back. “I broke it,” he said,

embarrassed all over again.

“On the court? Because Malloy would have told me about that.”

132 Amy Lane

Xander looked at him miserably, pathetically aware that Leo could

learn pretty much everything he wanted to know with a few questions to

folks other people ignored.

“I broke my goddamned little toe talking to Chris on the phone on

the running path, because I realized that we probably wouldn"t get to see

each other until the All-Star break in February and kicked a rock like a

little kid, does that make you happy?”

Leo started laughing a little, and stood, that brittle, bitter sound not

stopping even a smidge. “Ecstatic. Here. Here"s the goddamned remote.

I"m gonna go get you some ice. And another bandage because your

arm"s bleeding. And maybe a brain transplant, because I swear to Christ,

Xander, I thought you were the smart one, right up until you practically

stepped on my head.”

“I didn"t come anywhere near your head,” Xander grunted. Hell, he

hadn"t even come near Leo"s umbrella. It didn"t matter. Xander pressed

play and watched the television hungrily as Chris ran onto the court in