breaking my back just to know your name
back to start
You and Bobby move with Mulder and Adam Melhuse into a spread-out ranch-style house in Alamo. The kitchen is painted pale lime green and the inside of the hall closet door is almost completely papered over with glittery stickers, Paul and Lisa Frank both well-represented alongside My Little Pony and all manner of other girly shit. Mulder says the landlord offered to have the door replaced but he said no way, relishing the looks on people's faces when they went to hang up their coats.
It takes a little bit of maneuvering, but you and Bobby eventually secure the two back bedrooms, big windows facing the sheer hillside. You spend a couple of weeks slipping back and forth in the small hours of the morning, and you don't say anything about how the secret affair thing was totally played before you got out of the minors, because Bobby is getting easier by the hour, his shoulders and back loosening as the days lengthen and warm.
It has a lot to do with baseball, you're sure. Bobby has gotten off to a brilliant start here in his rookie year, all triples and magically deft footwork at short, socks pulled up high and jersey tucked tightly in. During your starts you find yourself checking over your shoulder for him again and again, a step late running to back up first when he starts a double play because your eyes stuck on him for a split second, his hands down and his body moving swiftly.
Nothing can permeate Bobby's good mood. He buys drinks for the whole bar, wants to drive around on the weekends looking for hitchhikers to pick up. You live under his arm, the crook of his elbow fitting against your shoulder, everything perfectly in place.
You're not exactly hiding, but you still never do anything except behind closed doors, and Bobby still keeps a few feet of space between you when you're in less familiar company. Back at the house, drunk and late at night watching The Soup, most of his barriers fall and you can rest your weight against him like normal, flicking at his knee to get his attention.
It's no way to keep a secret, but as long as Bobby's okay, you're okay. You daydream ludicrous scenarios, kissing him on the field in the immediate aftermath of your pennant-winning perfect game, a nationally televised interview where you tell the whole world that the best thing you found in the minor leagues was the shortstop. He inspires the craziest hopes in you.
Then you come home from getting your hair cut and you go around the side of the house because you can hear voices from the pool in the backyard, steady mumbles growing loud as you high-step through the overgrown weeds, pushing through the gate. You come up short just before breeching the patio, hearing Mulder say your name.
"What about him?" and that's Bobby and no way are you interrupting this conversation. You shift your weight silently, lean your shoulder on the side of the house, tipping your head to hear better.
"Well, you know about him and girls," Mulder says, "or, him and not girls, I guess I should say."
You roll your eyes and mime banging your head on the house. Way to keep a secret, Mark, although you know he wouldn't be talking this shit to anyone less than your best friend.
Bobby says, "Yeah," and then there's a pause, a rhythm of minor splashes and leathery thwacks and after a minute you realize they're playing catch in the pool, the scene coming clear to you.
"And he seems to like you an awful lot," Mulder says eventually. So subtly you almost don't notice it yourself, your whole body draws tight.
"I've noticed that too," Bobby answers, sounding totally cool and you wish you could see his face.
Mulder snorts. "You want me to actually ask you, Bobby?"
A longer pause this time, the catch noises gone too, and you picture Bobby holding the ball, hand jammed in his glove, giving Mulder that long considering look that you have gotten from him all too often. You wonder what you'll do if Bobby denies you in this moment, if you will be able to walk away from him like you should.
"No," Bobby says, and the ball cracks hard into Mulder's glove, timed for emphasis. "Apparently we're so obvious even a fucking meathead like you can spot it."
Mulder laughs and it's a lucky thing because so do you, one high note ringing before you clap your hands over your mouth, hunch down into your shoulders. Your chest feels carbonated, seven million tiny little bubbles, and for some reason your eyes are burning with tears. It's a lot to handle.
Mulder says, "Adam told me to ask you, as a matter of fact, so you might as well confirm it for him too."
You roll your head on the house, grinning madly up at the sky. Everybody knows, everybody can see. It shouldn't make you so happy, but fuck it, you're going to anyway.
Bobby misses a throw or Mulder misses a catch, depending on who you're getting the story from, and they complain back and forth about the waterlogged ball, the thwacks denser, sounding like thick hunks of meat hitting a wall. Then Mulder asks Bobby if he likes girls too, and Bobby says:
"I do, I actually like them a lot more than I like guys. It's weird, I just like Richie the most."
You sneak back around the front of the house. You do a stupid victory dance in the driveway, spinning yourself like a top and scuffing dust clouds up into the sunlight.
Everything is amazing for awhile.
Bobby hooks a finger in your belt loop when you're sitting on the counter eating cereal and he's waiting for the coffee to be ready. He slides his pickles onto your plate at diners without you having to ask. When he comes into the dugout after hitting a home run you can see him looking for you, see his grin widen when he catches your eye. You tell Zito about the two of you and he blinks, asks, "Didn't I already know that?"
You drive Bobby's car home when he's wasted one night, drifting and snoring all laid out in the cargo hold. He's usually tyrannical about not letting you drive, protects his Escalade like a child, but he's in no condition to argue. You travel half a dozen feet above the rest of the traffic, on top of the world.
You park in the driveway, turn off the car and crawl between and over the seats to fold yourself down next to Bobby. He's sprawled like a rag doll, legs crooked against the side of the car, and you tap your fingers on his forehead until he blinks his eyes open blearily, a slow grin taking over his face.
"Hey Richie," he breathes out, and reaches for you, a fistful of your shirt and he's pulling you down, leaning up to meet you halfway. You open your mouth against his, immediate and slick and hot, his tongue curling up behind your teeth. He pulls you down on top of him, murmuring and slurring and so drunk you don't think he knows where he is. Bobby has forgotten everything except you.
He gets you spread out under him, sucks you off for about an hour, easy and deep and like there's nothing he would rather do. You have been sleeping with him for better than two years and his mouth is still your go-to fantasy; it's bulletproof.
By the end of it you're drunk by osmosis, and you tug him up your body, your hands feeling like they're missing fingers. He's grinning at you, messy swollen-mouthed grin that does terrible things to your heart.
You say, "It's ridiculous how in love with you I am," and Bobby starts laughing, burying his face in your throat.
"Oh Jesus, Richie, we're in trouble," he manages eventually, hot puffs of breath still hitting your skin as he snickers. You nod, petting the back of his head, smoothing the soft brush of his hair.
"It's kind of overwhelming at first but don't worry, we'll get used to it."
He pulls his head up, gives you a look that you have a hard time reading, and then he says, "You're always so sure everything will work out," and he's not laughing much anymore, just watching you with shadowy careful eyes.
You shrug. "It's much more pleasant than the alternative."
Bobby nods slowly, studying your face intently. You palm his cheek, swipe your thumb along the fine line of his eyebrow. You're smiling at him; you've never stopped.
"You know I'm the same," Bobby says in a very low voice. You nod, not enough room in your chest for all the stuff that's happening.
"Yeah, I know," you tell him, and you kiss him again.
The rest of the year passes in a blur.
You pitch and Bobby plays short and the team is very good until the very end, when everything falls apart a little bit. Mulder, whose late-season injury last year cemented your place in the rotation, can't quite go the distance this season either, his mechanics disintegrating in August and September, his best sliders leaving the yard on the fly. The offense, never much to begin with, crumbles like sandcastles built too close to the water. Bobby's going to win the Rookie of the Year Award, but the league has adjusted to his quick bat, ferreted out the hole on his inside corner, and now his average is shrinking by the day.
It's the first time either of you has played the full one-sixty-two, spring training to October, and it decimates you even though you don't make the playoffs.
The Angels clinch the division on the second-to-last game of the season, beating you on your home field and you are obliged to sit on the dugout bench and watch them celebrating in gray, feeling stupefied and ill with dismay. Zito's a few feet down the bench, covering his face with a white towel, and you don't want to look at him but are compelled by that train wreck thing.
It doesn't fit with the conception of the team you have, brilliant runs through the early fall and then postseason heartbreak because everybody needs a little tragedy in their heroes. You've been trained by movies and the ballpark fables that you have been told all your life, trained to believe that effort and heart are all you need. You know this team; they suffer exactly as they should, silently so that they won't get taken out of the game.
It's just not right.
Bobby takes you home. You ask him if he'll get drunk with you and he says absolutely, so there's that to look forward to, at least.
You end up on the living room floor. Mulder's been locked in his bedroom since he got home from the yard, and you conjure up an image of him all depressed thirteen year old girl listening to Cat Power on his big headphones, staring hopelessly up at the ceiling for awhile before writing some black abyss poetry.
You tell Bobby about it and he laughs for about two minutes. You feel fine for a second, and then you remember about the baseball season being over and you get dejected again. You slump, sucking morosely on your beer and thinking that Mulder's inner goth kid has got nothing on you, honestly.
There has to be some safe ground left. You cast about briefly and tell Bobby, "So I was thinking we hang around here until you win the award--knock wood--and all that shit dies down and then you and me get a place in Vancouver or something. Then I can come down to L.A. after Christmas like last year. Acceptable, yes?"
Bobby flicks his hand at you weakly, but you're lying with your head on his stomach so you don't think he's that upset.
"What's all this making plans without committee input," Bobby asks, lazy and not wholly focused.
You twist to look at him, ear flat to his stomach to hear the interesting grumbling sounds. "What were you going to do?"
"Um. Well, follow you back to Canada, I suppose. But that doesn't make it okay."
You reach over, give his cheek a pat. You've almost gotten accustomed to this feeling in the heart of you; you almost don't even shake anymore.
"Sorry, honey, I just figured you were so busy with your bridge club," you say to inject some regularness to the proceedings, and Bobby obligingly serves you a smack, pulls what he can of your short hair. You grin hard, press your teeth against his stomach. "Anyway, I don't really give a shit, we can go to Long Beach first or Tahiti or wherever. You let me know."
Bobby leaves one hand on your abused head, stroking his fingers absently. His other is on your chest, spread out wide.
"Just home for now," Bobby says, and then pretty soon his hand is sneaking under your shirt and he's playing innocently, rubbing at your ear and counting your ribs and getting you worked up in a stealthy mind-fogging way. You end up squirreling on top of him and getting off like you're brand new at it, jeans open and hips pressed flush together, mouth full of his shoulder as if there's anyone around to hear.
Baseball has betrayed you both, but you have the next best thing.
The winter passes in a manner that is becoming routine. You get a roomy one-bedroom apartment in downtown Vancouver, a cramped little house on the hill above San Pedro. There's a view of the industrial harbor, the white Imperial Walkers that do nothing but remind you of Oakland. The weather is gray and cold in Canada, sunny and windy in California. You find excellent falafel places up north, sample the taquitos at every taco truck down south, and the days go by.
In December, just before Christmas, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder get traded in quick succession, and the aftershocks ring through the rest of the off-season. Bobby basically sets up camp at Barry Zito's house to keep him from going completely off the edge. You tag along, even though you don't really see what Zito's big problem is. The team is going to be fine, no matter who takes the field Opening Day. None of you are the type to stomach defeat on a regular basis; you won't allow it.
You're deeply involved with Bobby, anyway, not much of a sympathetic ear right now but surely you can be forgiven that. You want to keep him in bed until two or three o'clock in the afternoon. You go whole weeks forgetting to call your family or any of your old friends, and you're not trying to be a punk, honestly, you just can't for the life of you think of anyone else with everything you've got already dedicated to your shortstop.
Going to Phoenix is like waking up from a long dream, so intricately developed it's hard to find yourself in the real world again. There are a lot of new guys in camp this year, the guys Mulder and Hudson got traded for and the latest class of shiny new rookies for Billy Beane's never-ending parade.
Mulder and Hudson went for pitching and spare parts. The relievers are going to make the team easy, the hitters not close to ready yet, and there's an eight-man scrum for the three open starting jobs. The whole process is chaotic and cutthroat and awesomely fun to watch for those of you whose spots are already secure. You and Bobby talk about how this would make a fantastic reality show, Who Wants to Be a Big Leaguer? You amuse the hell out of each other and you both keep getting yelled at in team meetings for giggling ("like girls") instead of paying attention.
Everyone is being very careful to keep expectations as low as possible. Billy Beane actually says the word rebuilding out loud, and the next day the clubhouse feels noticeably depleted of air, slumped shoulders all around, but you get over that. The team comes together, piece by piece.
Danny Haren, who has quickly emerged as the real reason Beane was so hot to get rid of Mark Mulder, falls in with Zito almost immediately. They get along like high school best friends separated for years but finally living in the same city again. They both know three hundred dead baby jokes and it's kind of creepy. Once you and Bobby leave to have sex in the bathroom for the better part of an hour and when you get back Haren's still telling Zito the same pothead anecdote and they haven't even noticed that you were gone.
You know Haren's gonna make the rotation, and you figure Joe Blanton too. Blanton comes with his own sidekick in Nick Swisher, or maybe it's the other way around, you're not sure. The infield's set, and there are too many bats in the outfield but at least some of them can switch-hit. You and Bobby make sure Melhuse is gonna get a house with you again, and start casting around for a fourth, the season shaping up beautifully.
Spring training is almost over. You think it's a Wednesday but you have trouble keeping track of the days of the week when all you play are day games. You go rummaging in your bag for your phone to check, and Huston Street comes up to you.
"Um, Rich?"
"Yeah? Motherfucker." You almost rip your hand open on the sprung-loose coil of wire from your notebook. You're not looking up.
"I, I could come back? When you're not having a fight with your bag."
You snort, spare him a glance. The sight of him catches you off-guard every time, though you've gotten better at hiding it; he's perfect-looking in the spookiest way possible, and you don't trust how nice he seems.
"Don't mind me," you say, sucking on your scratched knuckle and giving up on your phone. "Help you with something?"
"Well, I was talking to Danny who was talking to Barry who I guess heard from Bobby that you guys are looking for someone to get a house with? Which I thought was convenient, 'cause I need a place to live."
Street grins encouragingly, and your smile back is automatic, because he's a very pretty boy and you've been very well-trained.
"Yeah, sure," you say and then stop, wonder if you should have given that a little more thought, or at least asked your other roommates. You shrug it off. Adam and Bobby won't care unless Street turns out to be lame, and if he's lame you won't have any problem chucking him out on the street.
You size him up. "You drink, right?"
Street gets affronted. "Of course! Jeez."
"Good. Hm. Living with a rookie, this might be fun."
Having the good sense to get a little worried, Street backs away, saying thanks a couple times. You go to find Bobby and make sure it's okay. Bobby's in the whirlpool, head tipped back, and you forcibly keep your eyes from wandering below his collarbones.
You say, "The kid wants to move in with us," and Bobby squints an eye open, asks, "Huston?" and you say, "Yeah," and he says, "Whatever," closes his eyes again.
So that's taken care of, and you bring your laptop to bed to show Bobby available rentals even though he doesn't care; he's been happy in every crummy place you've lived together, every minor league hotel room and decrepit beach house. Bobby says, "Make sure it's got a roof and a bed, and I'm good."
You call him a peasant, and find a house in Lafayette hidden completely from the road by the lush summer trees, a pool and a quick ride down the hill to the tunnel. The four of you move in on April Fools' Day, but only so far as to get your suitcases and taped-up cardboard boxes hauled into your respective rooms, and then you set about getting hammered as a catalyst for roommate bonding.
Melhuse manages to stay as cagy drunk as he is sober, and you don't learn much new stuff about him, but Street's a different story. He drinks like he's still unused to the novelty of doing it legally, his face flushing and his eyes getting wet and bright, and you are staring until Bobby nudges you, breaks the moment.
Street tells you about his girlfriend and his family and his friends and winning the College World Series and tales from the minors and how this is all so amazing, y'all, sincerely. He gets younger the later it gets, his body going slack and his head lolling. Melhuse tells a couple dirty jokes in his dry way and Street almost laughs himself sick, his face all red.
That night, Bobby teases you about the kid. You've zipped together two sleeping bags on the floor of your unfurnished room, and Bobby props his chin on your chest, smirking down at you.
"Never knew jailbait was your thing, Richie, that's kinda not cool."
You box at his ear lightly, scratch your fingers through his hair. "Ah, you can go to hell."
"Seriously, I'm kinda worried over here, man. You ask this kid to move in, you obviously want to bend him over something-"
"First of all, he asked to move in. Second of all, there's gonna be no bending of anybody over anything in this house if you don't watch yourself."
"Yeah yeah." Bobby snorts quietly against your chest, his rough chin scuffing your skin. "Shakin' in my spikes."
Neither of you means anything by it. Bobby still checks out girls all the time, his eyes kinda wistfully hungry when they come up to him in bars, press up against his side for their friends to take a picture. He mutters to you occasionally, "The things I could do to her," and you never mind because his mood is always subjunctive; he never says stuff like that in the future tense.
And for your part, you've hardly stopped being attracted to other guys, and it's hardly your fault that all the available eye candy happens to be on your team. Maybe Zito's huge hands or Eric Chavez's true grin flit through your fantasies sometimes, but you have a good understanding of the human condition and you know that's just the way people's reptile brains work; it doesn't mean anything.
So you can have your harmless little crush on Huston Street, and you can become friends with him just to test it out, see if it'll fade as he comes clearer to you. You stay up all hours with him watching crappy movies bought from the Wal-Mart bargain bins for $5.99. You ride down to get fast food in the middle of the night without bothering to put shoes on.
One night you lock your keys in your car and give the Triple-A guy the wrong highway exit and it takes him two hours to get there. You and Street sit on the car sharing tortilla chips from a white paper bag, talking about baseball, and you act like you're irritated by the delay but really you want to go pull down the street signs so the tow truck will never find you.
You keep Bobby up to date, trying to get him riled for a number of reasons, some more heavily obscured than others. You play it up, "And then we reached for a chip at the same time and our hands touched," and Bobby can't keep a straight face, breaking into laughter and pulling you down on the bed.
Street is soft-spoken until he gets drunk, and he's had politeness drilled into him from a young age, to the point where half the stuff he says trails upwards at the end like a question, always making sure it's okay. You would usually find that annoying--just take a goddamn stand, for Christ's sake--but Street manages to make it pretty endearing.
He knows a shitload about college football and is a total nerd for Texas state history. He actually is as nice as he seems. In May, Octavio Dotel goes down with an injury and Huston Street, a twenty-one year old freak just like you used to be, becomes the team's closer. By then he's already one of the best friends you've made since Bobby Crosby.
Which is why it takes you by surprise when Bobby asks you, "Have you told Huston about you and me yet?" and you realize that you haven't.
Worse than that, the idea of it makes something wrench uncomfortably in your gut. You don't want to tell Huston, and you're unnerved suddenly.
"No," you tell Bobby. "I. It's never come up."
Bobby glances at you before returning his eyes to the television, where you are fighting as samurais. His knee bumps against yours, the ticky-tap of your thumbs on the controllers and the trippy game music serving as the only background.
"Uh, I don't think it's ever gonna come up unless you bring it up," Bobby points out. "This was your big thing, gotta be honest with our friends or whatever the fuck it was."
You shrug, shift your weight. Your samurai loses an arm in a gout of vibrant red. "I, I don't know, man. You know he's hella religious and shit, he's from Texas, I just, I'm not a hundred percent on him yet."
Bobby's eyebrows raise, but he doesn't look at you, his samurai systematically hacking the rest of your limbs off. You are jamming the button to block, squeezing it hard against the plastic.
"He just goes to church like most of the rest of the world, I don't think he's hella anything. And I thought you didn't make friends with people who'd care," Bobby says, and you flinch.
"I don't."
Bobby shoots you a sidelong glance, then shrugs. "'kay."
He chops off your head, tosses the controller on the coffee table, gets to his feet and stretches long, his back popping. You eye the cut plane of his stomach where his shirt is pulled up, seeing the edge of the mark you sucked into the hollow of his hip last night.
"Hey Bobby let's fuck," you say, and he smiles down at you, shakes his head.
"Not tonight, honey, I've got a headache," he says, and you are almost certain that he's just fucking with you.
You carry on. You spend a lot of time with Street but even more with Bobby, and you sort out your crush eventually. It doesn't fade exactly, but instead kind of dims and fits itself into your basic affection for Street. He's a friend first, and then sometimes the light catches him right or he strikes out the side or something, and you remember that it would be awesome to fuck him, and you're able to leave it there, it would be awesome, never letting the thought mutate into goddamn I wish I could, or why the fuck shouldn't I.
You have things well in hand. You have Bobby still, every night and all day long, and you make sure he knows that prettyboy closers aside, you only have eyes for your shortstop.
The team starts off playing so poorly you want to hide your face from the television cameras. Bobby goes on the shelf almost immediately with a pair of broken ribs and you don't know what to do without him behind you. You look over your shoulder and see Marco at short and your next pitch sails fat and ripe down the heart of the plate. You get so frustrated, the stupidest little things going wrong on the field and costing you whole games. Oakland is in last place, a dozen games under .500. The rigid burn of objectless anger that you mostly shook off back in Double-A sneaks back under your skin, but you're older and more mature now and you know to throw your fits in the trainer's room, not the dugout.
Bobby says it's all very nostalgic, but if you fuck up your hand punching something he might not be able to be seen with you anymore. It's a pretty good threat, but you actually straighten up when he points out that Zito's keeping his shit together better than you are, and you obviously can't let that stand.
And then Bobby patches up, lifting weights in the garage and swimming in a diligent and measured way. He gets back enough strength to pin your hands to the headboard and fuck you blind, and you grin in dazy contentedness after, conjuring up images of him turning waltz-like double plays sometime in the near future. Bobby comes back towards the end of May, and your tethers are cut. The team starts playing insanely well, and for a couple weeks everyone calls Bobby 'Sparky.'
The summer is torn up in front of you, ripped like confetti. Everyone's hitting all of a sudden, and Haren's pitching better than you and you're pitching better than Blanton and Blanton's pitching better than Zito and none of you are pitching badly, not even close. You chase down the Angels all through the brightening season, and finally eke your way into first place, just as the calendar flips to August.
It's a desperately fragile thing, a sculpture made of the thinnest glass. You don't want to think about the run your team is on because if you think about it too much you'll start doubting it, and you learned really young that doubt is always a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Instead, you fill your days with pranks and mischief, plotting in hotel stairwells with your allies and always keeping an eye out for potential double crosses. You carry a loaded squirt gun hidden under your shirt and sneakily take shots at the guys when they're not watching. You help distract Bobby when Zito's trying to cheat at cards, just because you like seeing Bobby get all wound up and scowly.
You come home from a road trip at the tail end of summer, trailing remnants of joy because it's been an incredible year. You share a cab with your roommates and you are sitting bitch in back between Bobby and Street, the totally normal feel of your and Bobby's hips wedged together, the crisp awareness of Street's bony elbow rubbing yours. You're feeling unrealistically good, like you've been flung up into the sky.
You all tumble out at your house, and Melhuse says he's gonna go take a shower and Street says something about calling his girlfriend, and then they're both gone. You toe off your shoes and suddenly Bobby's got a hand on your stomach, pushing you up against the wall and kissing you on the mouth.
A surprised noise, half a laugh, and then you fold against him, tilt your head to the side and open your mouth. You're both grinning into the kiss, Bobby braced on his arm against the wall and taking his time, taking everything he can get from you.
Street's door slams so hard the walls vibrate, and you both jolt, peel apart. Bobby's eyes are big and his face is all lit up, and he twists a hand in your collar, pulls you down the hallway. Bobby waits until he's got a locked door between you and the rest of the world, and then takes your shirt off for you, presses the flats of his hands to your bare shoulders.
"What do you say, Richie?" Bobby asks with a minor smile. "You think this is our year?"
You nod too fast, well on your way to senseless, and you're jinxing the hell out of it, saying, "Of course, of course."
But September is still the cruelest month and some small strain of exhaustion begins to infect the team, creeps in through the cracks in your veneer, the hairline fractures traced like veins. The stupid little mistakes come back, lint-sticking no matter what you do to try and shake them. The team slips out of first place like half-waking from a dream and then falling back asleep again.
Street is taking it poorly, shuttering himself away in his room and staring sightlessly at magazines in the clubhouse instead of talking to any of his teammates. Zito says Street is suffering a quarter-life crisis and Danny just wants to get him drunk. You and Bobby both know about how a magnificent rookie year can cripple you if it ends too soon, and so you throw water balloons at Street from the roof of your house, and you buy packs of Klondike bars for him to smear all over his mouth like a five year old.
None of it helps much. Street retreats, sinking away from everyone but you feel like he's avoiding you especially, although that might just be your ego talking. He doesn't meet your eyes anymore, darting jerky glances here and there and not smiling. You can't figure out what you've done, and when you ask Bobby, he only says, "Fuck him, moody little punk."
Street has been leaving rooms as soon as you enter them, cold hollow feeling in your stomach every time you watch him do it, but he's distracted by country music videos and that new fog of absented pain all around him, and he doesn't notice until you plop down on the couch next to him.
You ask him if his girlfriend dumped him and he says no; you ask him if his dog died and he looks horrified, clutching his elbows in his hands. You're uneasy and more concerned than you've been so far, because Street is about to start hyperventilating or something, and you don't know what you've done.
You say, "Well, then, why're you all-" and he cuts you off quick, snapping:
"I don't want to talk about it, man, 'specially not with you."
Street's face drops open, shocked at himself, and then warps, wincing with regret, but you don't want to hear him apologize, anger and a random jag of mortification taking up all your available space.
"What the fuck does that mean, especially not with me? What the fuck did I do?"
He's shaking his head tight and fast, compulsive, and shoving to his feet. Street's face is redder than you've ever seen it, and he's running away like a fucking coward, and you wonder how the fuck you could have ever thought he was worth your time.
That's just the moment, though, it's just because for some reason Street hates you now and you are the type of person who automatically hates back. It almost never happens, it probably why. Almost everyone you've ever met has liked you, and Street was definitely in their company like a week ago. You keep trying to think of what you could have possibly done to cause this.
You hunt down Adam Melhuse, who is secretly the eyes and ears of the whole team, blending in effortlessly in that back-up catcher sort of way, keeping watch on all of them and bearing impartial witness.
"Have I gotten weird recently?" you ask him. Melhuse doesn't look at all surprised at the question, giving it a careful moment of thought.
"No more than usual," he decides eventually.
"Haven't been, like, sleep-talking shit about your mom, or anything?"
Melhuse actually stops and thinks about that one too, and you lean against the kitchen counter with your arms crossed, smirking at him.
"That's the kind of thing that sticks with a person, so I'm gonna go with no again," he tells you.
You exhale a frustrated breath, go into the fridge for a beer. "Want?" Adam nods and you toss him a can, saying, "Soft hands, soft hands," and of course he's got that going for him, so the can doesn't even spurt a little when he cracks it open.
"Huston doesn't like me anymore," you say, and then you feel really dumb, staring at your feet.
"That appears to be the case, yes."
"He won't tell me why. If I fuckin' knew--I mean you gotta give a guy a chance to apologize or make it up or something, right?" You scowl at the floor, feeling bitter and hard-done-by. "Unless he's just fucking nuts. You think we woulda picked up on that sometime in the last six goddamn months."
"Well. Maybe some reconnaissance is in order, then."
You look up, hike your eyebrows and make a little grin. "Would ya, Adam?"
Melhuse waves his hand, something faintly regal in the gesture. "For you, my son, the world."
You've got pretty cool friends.
It's a couple days later that Melhuse reports back. You and Bobby are on his bed watching shit on Youtube, and he comes in, shuts the door behind him. One look at Melhuse's face is enough to get you to mute the laptop. He's pissed off but also kinda disappointed and sad and you don't know which is worse.
"So I talked to the kid," Melhuse says. He's looking at the both of you, and you experience a dull thud of foreboding because there's no reason to include Bobby in this, it's not Bobby's problem.
But then Adam says, "He saw you guys," and Bobby freezes because it just became his problem too.
You sag back against the headboard, swallowing hard. "That's it? Just 'cause of, of-"
"What did he see?" Bobby interrupts, voice ground down low and dangerous. Melhuse shakes his head.
"I didn't get the details, man. Probably nothing much, you keep it behind closed doors pretty good. But fuck, I've still seen you making out at least three times. Never mentioned it, of course, being the soul of discretion and all, but there ya go."
Bobby buries his face in his hands and you certainly don't need that right now. You grab the back of his neck, give him a hard get-it-together shake, but he just pushes you off. Your hand closes into a fist and falls to your leg, and you lock your eyes on Melhuse, ignoring Bobby if that's how wants it.
"And he said, what, is he like disgusted now, is he gonna move out or something?"
Your voice cracks slightly but you blame it on the stress. Bobby presses his elbow into your side and you push back.
Melhuse shrugs, looking stymied. "I think if he was gonna, he woulda already. And I don't think he thinks you're, like, evil or something, he just said you shouldn't be--you know. Like he was sad about it, but not mad."
You shake your head, like that fucking matters. Like Street wanting to weep for your poor hell-bound soul is any better than Street wanting to kick the shit out of you for liking dick. It all comes back to the same thing, Street getting up and walking out of rooms as soon as you walk in.
"Motherfucking Texas," you snarl. Melhuse smirks.
"Now, now, let's not reverse-discriminate," he chides, and then stops, tips his chin up. "Why didn't you tell him? You told everybody else that counts."
It's your turn to freeze, your mouth open but nothing coming out. You can feel Bobby's gaze hot on your face and you can't look at him, you don't want to see it.
Melhuse takes pity on you after a moment, shrugging again and looking away. "I mean, I guess you were right not to. I just never expected this out of him, you know? He's such a good kid."
"Yeah," you say without thinking, and then, "Except maybe not so much."
You glance at Bobby and he's glaring down at his hands, a strained line dug across his forehead, his mouth forced into a tight bow. You really aren't looking forward to hearing his reaction to all this.
Melhuse says, "So, yeah," and asks if you want to go to the good Mexican place for dinner and you say no because you might never eat again; your stomach feels a tenth of its right size, shriveled and hard as a pit.
Melhuse thoughtfully closes the door behind him, and you and Bobby sit there in silence for a moment, not looking at each other. There is a coring sensation searing through you, stinging in your eyes and the back of your throat and making you want to throw up and throw yourself into a wall and after a second you identify it with a dawning sense of horror: it's shame.
Huston Street has made you ashamed.
"Jesus Christ, I might have to beat him up," you hear yourself saying as if from very far away.
Bobby shoves the laptop aside and gets to his feet. He runs his hands over his hair a few times, scrubbing hard across his face.
"Shut up, Richie," he says, making something jag painfully in your chest.
"What the fuck?" you demand, and Bobby shoots you a brief hateful look over his shoulder that has you recoiling, hissing silently between your teeth.
"I took your word that he was a good guy when you let him move in. You didn't want to tell him so he found out by accident, and now look what's happened."
You clench your hands in the bedcovers, your eyes gaping and over-dry, fury writhing around directionless inside your body. "You never wanted to tell anyone-"
"Yeah, a fucking year and a half ago," Bobby snaps back. "But I've come around to it, haven't I? Because it was like you said, only the guys we trusted. And if you didn't trust him then what the fuck is he doing here? You want to suck his cock that badly, man, you coulda just fuckin' said."
You just stare at him for a few moments, feeling dumbstruck and small and betrayed on an epic scale. Bobby is breathing heavily like after his sprints but it's just emotion, adrenaline, color on his face and manic pieces of silver glittering in his eyes. His lip is sneered and there is a part of you that knows he is absolutely right. This is pretty much all your fault, you and that stupid pointless crush you once had.
You clap your laptop shut and get to your feet, serving Bobby the coldest glare you can summon. He sends it right back, chilling you.
"Fuck off and die, Bobby," you say because you have to say something, and something breaks on his face as you slam the door behind you.
Locked in your own room, the dresser shoved in front of the door because you're feeling melodramatic, you crashland into panic for a few minutes, a completely foreign country in which to find yourself. You have always been so sure of yourself, notched into the world with such a good fit. You never assume the worst about people and you have this basic faith that it comes back to you in kind, and all those assholes out there who like to concern themselves with who you fuck, you've never bothered to worry about them because you've never cared about any of them.
And now you've known Huston Street for half a year and a little while ago he was one of your best friends.
You wonder who he's going to tell. You compose headlines and breaking news alerts on ESPN in your head, and hope you'll have a chance to warn your parents before reporters start calling. You talk a pretty good game about not giving a fuck, but you've never had your junk discussed on talk radio, so who knows what it'll do to you. Maybe that's a little far-fetched, rather more grandiose a revenge than Street could plausibly orchestrate. But he could get drunk in thirty different cities and make poorly-disguised suggestive remarks until every ballplayer in the game knows about those two fuckin' faggots out there in Oakland. It's more passive-aggressive, but it would certainly get the job done.
You turn on the television and scan around until you find a Braves game on TBS, and you turn it up, letting the normal baseball game sounds calm you down. You're getting overexcited, fanciful and paranoid. It takes a couple of innings, but you get your heartrate down and you get a more reasoned perspective on things.
Street is not going to fuck you over. You're not that bad a judge of character; you wouldn't have survived this long, not with the mouth you've got on you. You can see Street staging an intervention to cure you of your sinner's ways, but never discussing your business with a third party because, well, that would just be rude.
He'll never be your friend again, that's pretty much a given. It sticks in your throat for a minute, makes something throb dense and blistering under your ribs. You were getting used to him being around, all gosh and jeez and hilarious drunk faces, his statements that sound like questions and the way his eyes shine like high-beams when he comes in to take the ball from you.
You unearth the emergency bottle of Jack that you keep in the bottom of your road trip bag, and drink until you feel more numb than anything else. Some redneck singer yowls in a truck commercial and you throw a shoe at the screen, a feral barbed-wire smile twisted across your mouth. You're thinking, fuck him if he doesn't like it, fuck him, fuck him, and you're gonna get drunk enough to believe it.
It's good for many things, the coming drunk, not the least of which is that you can't let yourself think about Bobby just yet; you can't touch that part of it. You wish he hadn't turned around and blamed it on you, even if he had a right. It was a kick in the slats when you were already down, and you've earned better than that from him. You wish you hadn't told him to fuck off and die. But you can't think about that now.
Drunken stupor gets you through that night, and then the hangover conveniently consumes you up until it's time to crawl out of bed and go to the ballpark. Bobby's car is already gone from the driveway and you choke down some cornflakes, thinking about how it's been a month since the two of you didn't share a ride to the yard.
Once you're ensconced in the stadium, it's pretty much business as usual, Street pinned to the wall as far away from you as the room allows, your teammates obnoxious and blasting terrible rap music that just makes you deeply embarrassed to know them. Bobby's nowhere to be seen, probably shut himself up in the cages or with the trainers or something. He'll be much better than Street at avoiding you; he knows your routines better than you do.
The whole idea makes you want to crawl under your bed, build a fort to keep the wicked world out. You can't stand Bobby looking at you like he hates you; it's going to kill you.
You hide in the clubhouse during the game, collaring Zito and getting him to show you some guitar stuff so you'll have an excuse if anyone ever asks. You eat a quick dinner off the spread and leave as soon as you can, fighting off a disturbing sense of running away. There is a second-run theatre in San Leandro and you pay for the eleven o'clock, then sneak into the midnight showing so that you'll have a place to stay for a little while longer.
You can't remember what movies you see. You can't even remember if it was two different movies, something about space monkeys and something about spooky kids with super powers and you're barely even here. You're turning your phone over and over in your hands, waiting for it to come to life.
It seems entirely reasonable to think that Bobby might leave you over this. You've prodded him along every step of the way, answered every concern he raised with a facile, "Don't worry it'll be okay," and look where that's left you, no idea what to do once things turn out not-okay. You try to imagine not talking to him anymore, never getting your hands on him again, and you start to shake so bad you have to hunch over your knees with your head in your hands. You'd rather be diagnosed with terminal cancer.
After the movie you go to an all-night diner in Hayward for an hour or so, until they say you have to order more than coffee or get the hell out. So you get the hell out, stumbling home past three in the morning and thinking that that coffee was unforgivably stupid; you'll never sleep now.
You weren't really intending to, anyway, you know this won't let you rest. A constant pulse of anger runs through everything else, a great baffling sense of savage injustice, because you are a good guy ninety-seven percent of the time and you don't know what you did to deserve this. You love your family and your friends and your boy, you're always trying to make them laugh. You play as hard as you can and you never act like a dick to umpires or throw real heat when you're brushing someone back. You say please and thank you to cashiers and waiters, you hold open doors for the people behind you, you never pretend that panhandlers are invisible. Maybe you do stupid things sometimes but there is no malice in you at all, and none of this is in any way fair.
All you've done is believe that Huston Street is a better man than he's turned out to be, and it makes you want to punch walls, that something so small could have these kinds of consequences.
You get home and everybody's cars are in the driveway. You don't want to see any of them, but it's so late it's early and you probably don't have to worry about it. The motion-lights over the garage flick on as you come up to the house and you flinch with your whole body, pure terror for a minute thinking a nuclear bomb has been dropped.
The house is dark and still, and you toe off your sneakers into the pile by the door, miss the hook trying to hang up your coat and it crumples to the floor. You go to the bathroom and drink four cups of water, gasping and wet-faced by the end, and then you go to bed.
Bobby's already there.
He's asleep all burrowed away under the covers like normal, and you don't notice until you've stripped to your shorts and slid in on your side, your leg bumping his and making you start, grunting in surprise. Bobby twitches awake, batting the covers off his head and rolling to face you. You're half-lying down, blinking at him and wondering if you've fallen asleep in the movie or something, if you've just made it a lucid dream.
"Hey," Bobby says, husk and rasp and sleep-thick, and you swallow with a click. "Fuckin' time's it?"
You force your muscles to give, stretching the rest of the way out beside him. You're trying to figure out what it means, him in your bed just a few hours before dawn, but you're very tired and made worse by the simple sight of him with pillow-creases on his face and heavily-lidded eyes. You don't want to think anymore about it tonight.
"It's late, go back to sleep," you tell him, and take a risk, put your hand on his hip. He doesn't seem to find it strange, nodding and cracking his jaw on a yawn.
"Didn't think you were gonna come home," Bobby mumbles, eyes almost all the way closed now.
You get a better grip on his hip, slide yourself closer subtle and slow. All the scattered pieces of your life draw together again as if Bobby's the magnet that joins you. You bump your forehead on his shoulder, push your arm over him and he only sighs, shifting to accommodate you.
"Sorry," you say very quietly, and his breathing doesn't change, his chest rising easily under your arm.
"'s not your fault he's a jerk," Bobby tells you in that wrecked voice of his. "We'll be okay."
You squeeze your eyes shut, a smile on your face but it feels chipped, carved out of marble. It's a kind thing for Bobby to say and you love him for it. You'd like to believe it wholly without reservations, but you know better than to hold people accountable for things they say when it's almost four in the morning.
But you'll be able to sleep now, at least.
The next couple days you and Bobby move gingerly around each other. You play videogames side by side but you both have your iPod headphones in so you don't have to talk. You bring him Cokes in the clubhouse and he makes sure to get you a peanut butter cookie from the spread if he gets there first, because the peanut butter cookies always go quickest. You sleep in the same bed but don't fool around. There's a weird post-traumatic stress feeling between the two of you, like you barely survived a gruesome car crash or something, and now neither of you quite trusts the safety and solidity of the other.
You're going to have to talk to Street, you know. You wait until the team goes on the road, so that Street will have at least a week to get over it before you have to live in the same house as him again. He skips out on dinner with the team, claiming exhaustion, and you spend the whole meal feverishly writing confrontation scenarios in your mind. Bobby gives you knowing looks, hooks a finger in your belt loop under the table. Back at the hotel, you do a couple shots with Zito in the bar, and then go upstairs, throw your button-down into your room and go knock on Street's door in your shirtsleeves.
It takes him awhile to answer, and you worry that he's spotted you through the peephole and is just going to leave you hanging, but when he finally gets the door open he looks befuddled enough that you think he was actually asleep. You lean against the door on the opposite side of the hallway, give him a long look.
"Adam says you've got a problem."
He darts his eyes at you, vaguely frantic, and says, "I do not."
"Really? Because it's not like anyone would blame you for freaking out a little bit. I mean, it's not every day you find out your roommates are fucking."
You say it to shock him and it mostly works; he grabs you and hauls you into the room before the last word is all the way out of your mouth. His look of childlike fear as he scans the hall and shuts the door, all huge eyes and flickering hands, strikes you as hysterical, and you start laughing, falling onto the bed.
Street wants to know what the hell your problem is, but you can't believe him, you can't believe someone could be so distraught over something so regular and unremarkable as you being gay. You have always been gay, it's not like Street was pals with some fake breeder version of you.
But now he's looking at you with his hands half-raised like he wants to be in position to defend himself, and your stomach turns rottenly, laughter scraping to nothing. You sit up, bracing your hands on the bed, glare at him and he takes a step backwards without even realizing it.
"You could stop looking like I'm gonna kill you, Huston, and that'd be good."
Street rips his eyes off you, throat moving fast and his trembling hands reaching for his bag. He shakes his head and bites his lip, starts unpacking his stuff into the dresser drawers while you watch in disbelief.
He tells you, "Adam got it wrong, okay, I'm fine."
Your mouth curls in a nasty smirk. "Right. So you're unpacking even though we're leaving tomorrow. Nice."
Street's face goes a deep red color, but he doesn't answer and he doesn't stop, separating his socks from his T-shirts and you want to grab him and shake him, just rattle some sense into the motherfucker and snap him out of it.
"Never took you for the type, man," you say in a weakened tone.
Street catches your eyes in the mirror for a split second, his face tortured and holding back and then he's looking away, not saying anything, and anger wins out in you, bolting through so fast. You don't fucking deserve this.
"Like, sorry if we've fucked with your expectations or whatever, but your expectations are not exactly our responsibility. Me and him, we came first. We fucking pre-date you."
You pull in a hard breath and you're staring at Street's turned back and not calming down at all.
"I don't know where you get the fucking balls, man, to act like we're fucking beneath you or something, like I was only your friend so long as I didn't make you uncomfortable, like, so fucking sorry, hate to fucking bring you down. Not gonna leave him because you've got a problem with it, can't believe you think I would. You and him are just fucking miles apart, you think I've missed you the way I'd miss him?"
It's too much, more than you really wanted to get into, but your heart is pounding and your face is flushed and your hands are wrenched in fists in the bedspread. Maybe you're a little more screwed up about this whole thing than you've let yourself know. You want Street to fucking look at you. How can he hate you because of this, how could you have misplayed him so badly? You liked him, you liked him a whole fucking lot, and now it's all fucked.
Street stops your cruel rant, raising his eyes to yours in the mirror with what looks like a great deal of effort. He says, "Hey, hey, you're right," and you come up short, blinking. You were just running your mouth.
"I am?"
Turning to face you, Street keeps a hand clutching the dresser, holds your eyes steadily enough. He looks scared to death but determined, a taut hollow in his cheek where his teeth are clenched. "I'm being dumb."
You narrow your eyes, thinking he might just be trying to get rid of you. You don't want a Band-Aid, you want to get this fucker fixed. "Little bit, yeah."
He flits a hand through the air, doing his level best to look casual and it's a pretty pitiful attempt, all things considered. "You and him, it's great."
You barely manage to keep from busting up laughing again, scowling to keep your expression from betraying you. You release your death grip on the covers, try to keep your voice neutral as you say:
"Don't go zero to sixty, man. Take some time to adjust."
"I'm adjusted," Street says quickly. You lift an eyebrow and ask him if he's gonna be weird anymore, but in the same moment Street's saying, "You love him?" and you blanch, turn your face away.
You're embarrassed, you don't talk about that sort of thing with anybody. You only very rarely talk about it with Bobby; it's too delicate for the air, is the problem.
Shaking his head so fast you're worried he's gonna tweak something, Street is saying, "Never mind, sorry, sorry," and it gets quiet.
Street is still acting so jumpy, so awkward and out of place, and you honestly don't know what to think. You figure he's telling you what you want to hear to get you out of the room, and then you wonder why he would care if you loved Bobby, if maybe that would make it okay for him. Jesus Christ talked a lot more about love for your fellow man than he did about stoning homosexuals, after all, and maybe Street has his priorities in better order than you're giving him credit for.
You sigh. All that's wishful thinking, you can admit it. Street probably just asked out of morbid curiosity or something.
"Look," you tell him, watch him flinch at the sound of your voice. "I just wanted to make sure that we're cool. It shouldn't change anything, because it's always been like this, you just never knew."
Street nods, biting the corner of his lip for a second before he pastes a smile across his face. It doesn't fit at all, and your stomach lurches as he says, "We're cool, Richie. I, I am sorry."
And you want to know what he's apologizing for specifically, because you feel like there are at least four different things it could be, but Street is making a break for it before you can ask, talking loudly about how he missed dinner and is now considering cannibalism and you follow him out of his room into the hallway, feeling simultaneously better and worse about the whole mess.
more thisaway