yeah i know it's stupid
starts over here
Lincecum is inconstant across the room, not looking for you. You can't catch his eye, so you go over there, edging through the crowd like a minefield and leading with your left shoulder. Lincecum is involved in an animated discussion with Freddy Sanchez, and he startles when you sling an arm around his shoulder, looks up and immediately relaxes.
"Decided to grace us with your attention again, eh?" Lincecum says. "I for one am honored."
You put him into a headlock that he doesn't resist at all, folding in neatly against your side. Freddy is grinning at the two of you.
"Don't hate me 'cause I'm popular, dude," you tell him.
Lincecum snorts against your ribs, short-lived warm ruffle that you can't really feel through your shirt and jersey. His hand is fisted on your hip, and you are suffering flashbacks to that blowjob earlier, navy blue light and Lincecum's pale hands, impossibly hot mouth taking you down. You let him go just because you're not really in the right state of mind to trust your own judgment.
"You don't look nearly drunk enough," Lincecum diagnoses, and presents a fresh beer with a flourish.
You take it, sharp crack of aluminum, sucking the spare off your thumb. You kill half the can in one long pull, your head back.
"Who were you talking to, anyways?" Lincecum asks. You shrug.
"Couple old teammates. Tim Hudson, actually."
"Shit, did he tell you how he intends to pitch us?" Sanchez asks. "Because that would be helpful."
"No such luck, man."
"Lame."
Lincecum leans close, smiling up at you like a kid hoping for an autograph. "You told him we were gonna kick their asses, right?"
"Naturally."
Out of the crowd rises an impromptu group rendition of 'We Are the Champions,' spearheaded by Brian Wilson with Javier Lopez on high harmony. Sanchez turns towards them, calling joyful encouragement.
Because Lincecum is there, because Freddy has become distracted, because you are sick of all these other people, you put your mouth near his ear and say low, "You wanna get out of here?"
He pulls back a little, blinking. "Um, no? This shit's just getting started."
You shift your weight. "Kinda over it already."
"Yeah, well. It's the first time for some of us."
You bite your tongue, and fake a smile, a careless shrug. Lincecum is giving you a vaguely suspicious look, like you're keeping something from him but you're not; you'll tell him whatever he wants to know. He just never asks the right questions.
"That's cool," you say, even though it's not really. You would really like to leave, and apparently you'd really like to take him with you, because there's the door and here you are on the other side of the room.
"Have another beer," Tim instructs. "Beer fixes everything."
"Good advice, Drunky McCirrhosis."
Lincecum laughs, and bumps you with his shoulder. "Clever as fuck, you should write a book or some shit."
You make another not-quite-real smile. You want to put your arm around his shoulders again but that might be weird and obvious. You try to be aware of that stuff, because somebody has to be. You're anxious, jittery, feeling like every reporter in the building is out for your blood. You're maybe exaggerating things a little bit.
Your phone buzzes in your back pocket. You fish it out, and blink at the lit-up screen.
It's Mark fucking Mulder, which does rather go with the theme of the night but still comes as an absolute shock. You haven't talked to that guy in four years.
"Outta the fuckin' woodwork," you mutter.
Lincecum tips towards you, angling to see. "What? Who'sat?"
"Nobody. Mind your own business." You palm his face, pushing him away but not with any kind of malice, same way you'd push down a puppy that keeps jumping up.
You consider answering but then you think it might turn into a ridiculous farce, and as you're staring at your phone debating, the call ends. Half a minute later, the phone buzzes again with a new voicemail, which surprises you somewhat--you would have bet on Mulder just hanging up when he couldn't get through.
Lincecum has joined half a dozen other guys in pouring the better part of a twelve-rack over Bruce Bochy's head. They're shouting and jumping, bouncing off each other like slam dancing, and Boch has his hands over his head, laughing hugely with foam iced in his scruffy gray beard. The whole scene is being filmed from three separate angles.
You slip off to the quieter side of the room. The floor is beginning to reel, as slick and unstable as a riverbed. Your impressions are half reality and half drunken nonsense. Just a moment ago, a consequence of that last beer, you passed the point where you can rightly tell the difference.
Phone to your ear, turned away from the celebration, you listen to Mulder saying:
"Hey man, um, congratulations and shit. I, I saw you on television a little while ago with your boys, that was crazy and, and um. Fuckin' memories, yeah? Yeah. So, uh, have a good night, and good luck, like, really good luck, Barry. Um. Yeah."
It ends there, the disappearing sound of a snapped connection. You are amazed. Mulder has not appreciably changed in these four years, no more than he did in the decade that preceded them. Your first memory of him is at a bonfire in Cape Cod, when you were both nineteen and playing for the summer league, and he had stammered and ummed his way through a story that probably wouldn't have made any sense anyway. Talking has never been Mulder's strong suit. Everything else the man has ever tried, on the other hand--you'd rather not get into it.
The sadomasochistic side of you wants to call him back. The awkwardness would be incalculable, you don't doubt that. It's always been a big part of Mulder's appeal: you disconcert him to an amazing degree. You suspect that you may be the first genuine homosexual he's ever met, or anyway, the first who doesn't give a shit if his friends know about it. You remember Mulder watching you pick up a guy in a club with a blatantly gobsmacked look on his face, his beer arrested halfway to his mouth. You remember running into him in the hallway of the house he used to share with Eric Chavez, some three in the morning when you looked exactly like you just got fucked and he couldn't get a sentence out, marble-mouthed and training his eyes two feet over your shoulder because you weren't wearing a shirt and there were possibly visible bite marks.
Chavvy told you to give him a break, just tone it the hell down sometimes, but fuck that. You had to deal with Mulder's bar skanks sharing the same breakfast table in the morning, and his terrible awful horrifying taste in music, and his boring-ass stories that never go anywhere, so he could deal with you having a lot of sex with his roommate.
It was good for Mulder, really. Helped him grow as a person and shit. After awhile he stopped being so weirded out by you being gay, and commenced being weirded out by you being you, which was an encouraging step forward.
Then it went to hell with Chavez and, well. It's always been plain that Mulder's loyalties lie with anybody but you.
You haven't spoken to him since the A's went to the ALCS in 2006, and he hasn't pitched in a major league baseball game in years and years (be honest: it's only been two, but time moves differently at this level). You call him back, feeling driven and itchy and maybe a little bit self-destructive again; it comes back at the worst possible times.
It rings almost all the way to the message, and you're planning out what you'll say like a battle map, and then Mulder answers, shock of shocks.
"Barry, how, how the fuck you doin'?"
"How the fuck do you think?" you answer, aware that you're grinning hugely but not entirely sure why.
"Yeah, hell of a game, man, shit was ridiculous. And, uh, congratulations, that, that, that's really fuckin' cool."
Mulder sounds off-kilter, out of tune if he were music, but you figure that's probably only the distance.
"Thanks, dude."
A pause, and then you both speak at the same time--"What-" "Who-"--and you both stop, clear your throats.
"Uh, go ahead," Mulder says.
You shake your head. You can hardly remember what you meant to say and you realize belatedly that you're pretty drunk now.
"Just--how's life?" you settle on.
Mulder makes a short cut-off sound. "Fine, it's fine. I, um, I've been winning some golf tournaments and shit, don't know if you heard."
The phone tree connecting the former members of the Oakland Athletics is more like a stump that has Dutch Elm Disease. You've never been very good at keeping up with people you don't see every day. They've become Facebook friends instead of real ones. You only ever talk to them when something happens like your team winning the National League West.
"That's cool, man. God forbid you ever get a real job, right?"
"I'll get one when you do," Mulder says, and you smirk. You and Mulder have always gotten along best when trading toothless barbs.
"Gotta keep my current job first," you tell him. Mulder hesitates, breathes.
"Are you, um. Are they saying you might not--might not pitch in the playoffs?"
"That is indeed what they're saying," and you are still grinning, more like a hysterical grimace now and God only knows why.
Mulder hums briefly. "But that's--aren't you the only pitcher who's been there before?"
"That's true."
"So you should, um--they should let you pitch."
He's uncomfortable, but that's only to be expected. You rub your face, watching the celebration like someone not welcome to join, although that's not true--no matter how poorly you've pitched these past three years, you know that people here at least like you. You're not sure why, but anyway.
"Preaching to the choir, Mark."
"That, um. Sucks, man. Uh. You're there, though. At least you still made it there."
"Yeah." You let a moment of silence pass in memory of Mark Mulder's left arm. "And, um. Thanks for calling."
"Oh. I, I, I was talking to Huddy a second ago. So it seemed, you know. Relevant."
"Sure. The real question, of course, is who you'll be pulling for in the division series."
Mulder laughs his brief nasally laugh, and you miss him very much all of a sudden, as much as Huddy or Richie or any of the other guys, which is strange because Mulder was never once your favorite in the moment.
"I'm flipping a coin, man. Unless you want to toss a couple million dollars my way to tip things in your favor."
You roll your eyes. The cracks about you being freakishly overpaid got old awhile ago.
"Are you gonna make it to any of the games?" you ask.
"Uh, that, that's doubtful. Our boy's still real little, you know."
You don't know, as a matter of fact. You find the idea of Mulder as a dad to be really bizarre for reasons you can't explain. Probably it's just that he's such a frat boy in your mind, frozen in his twenty-four year old incarnation.
There is another lapse. You listen to him breathing and when you picture him in your head, he looks like when he got that bad sunburn after falling asleep on the back patio, his skin tight and red and that quick hiss every time someone slapped him on the back, and you think about how he peeled all over for almost a week, little bits of skin everywhere.
"So, anyway," Mulder says. "Good luck and all."
"Yeah thanks. Good luck with the golf thing."
"Don't need it, but thanks," he replies cockily, and you bite your lip to keep from laughing out loud. Mark Mulder lived twenty-eight charmed years on this planet, and then the long decline, the slowest way down, pitch by pitch, tendon by tendon, cut by cut. It seems to you that the thing he lost, the thing he needs the most, is luck.
"Can I call you Johnny Golf now?" you ask.
"Dude, please don't."
"Whatever, I'm gonna."
"Whatever, weirdo. Go, go, go drink a beer for me. Tear it up some," and he's smiling, you can hear him smiling.
You say goodbye and end the call and that wasn't half as bad as you feared. You might actually feel a little bit better. Mark Mulder for the win, and it's the oddest thing that has happened to you tonight.
Timmy finds you again. He comes out of the woodwork too, out of the faceless crowd to attach himself to you, mad spinning eyes and hair plastered to his neck. One hand twists in your shirt at the hip.
"Dude, what are you doing," Lincecums demands of you, nothing like a question in it. "Get into the fuckin' party, seriously."
"I'm in it," you protest, enfeebled by the dig of his knuckles into the hard bone of your hip.
"Bullshit you are. Fuckin' wallflower on the phone all the time, like, what division title? I don't care, I'm Barry and this shit happens to me all the time."
He's just screwing around, never means any harm, but you are stung. You sock him on the arm, and he yelps, lets you go.
"You're drunk."
"So what! Everybody is drunk here, that is the point." Lincecum smiles and shows his charming face. You resolve to be unswayed.
"World Series is the point, I thought."
His eyes go wide. "Dude! You're not supposed to say it!"
"Get out of here with that superstitious shit," you tell him, only being contrary.
"What, you were the one who taught me most of it, you crazy bastard. And how drunk are you, darling?"
You stare at him for a moment. "Not drunk enough to call you darling, that's for goddamn sure."
Tim laughs his goofy stoner laugh and hollers to the room at large, "More beer over here!"
You laugh too, and Lincecum lights up because getting you to laugh out loud is his favorite thing short of strikeouts. His hand is back wrapped in your shirt; you didn't even notice this time.
Cody Ross appears with two cracked beers like some kind of magic party gnome, blue eyes electric-gleaming, and then immediately vanishes back into the crowd. You and Tim bang your cans together, foam over your fingers and half the beer gone in the first pull. You see no reason to slow down now.
"You're done being on the phone, right?" Lincecum asks with an encouraging lean into your side, like if you say yes he just might go down on you again.
"For the moment," you answer.
"No, you're supposed to say, yeah, totally done, let's rock."
"And yet here we are." You push his head away. One of the trainers is nearby, damp khaki pants and orange shirt, using a smartphone to film the crowd, and the last thing you need is that soppy look on Lincecum's face showing up on YouTube.
"How did you get to be so lame, really? And are you gonna be like this for the rest of the night?"
"Yeah probably," you reply just to see his face scrunch up in drunken dismay. "We can leave whenever you want."
"I don't want, I never want!" and Tim is shouting, getting out of hand. "You're coming with me, motherfucker, coming right now."
He drags you into the crowd, into the mess of teammates that you have been observing like an exotic tribe from the side of the room. Chimeric rituals and traditions, guys whooping and singing and pounding each other on the back, telling fanciful mistruths to the press. They've given up pouring beer over each other's heads in favor of drinking it, and now everyone looks blurry, diluted and youngish.
A number of minutes passes you by in the shuffle. Tim is stuck to your side, an engine running hot under his clothes and skin, beaming at you in close proximity. He's a shield, a buffer against the rest of the world. You are worried in a distant way about what will become of you in the unspecified future, if you should lose him as you have lost your other team, and then you drink another beer and you aren't worried about anything anymore.
The celebration goes on like that for awhile, and you suffer it with a stupid grin on your face, too aware of cameras and microphones. You avoid reporters as if they're contagious.
And then, at long freakin' last, things begin to die down. The media is first to go, and then the ballpark employees and front office brass and other non-essential personnel trickle out of the clubhouse, and the knots of ballplayers get smaller and tighter. Brian Wilson reoccurs with his stark black shoe-polish beard making him look like a cartoon criminal, trumpeting and catcalling and ordering everybody and their mom to come over to his place and get righteously fucked up.
Lincecum wants to go, he tugs at your shirt and says, "Yeah, hell yeah, we are so there," but you shoot that idea down on spec. You pull Tim away and put your mouth next to his ear, telling him about the filthy things you want to do to him as his eyes get very big and dark, eager as hell. He grins, "Actually, okay, let's do that," and then finally, finally, you get to change out of your ruined uniform and put on regular shoes again.
Nobody is sober enough to drive, and outside the ballpark awaits a line of taxis that someone had the foresight to call. You and Lincecum climb into the same cab, and he shouts goodnight out the rolled-down window to the other guys, goodbye and good luck and see you tomorrow and all the rest of it.
You give the cabbie your address. Lincecum jams right up next to you, his poky shoulder tucked into your arm.
"This is great, so fuckin' great, seriously," and Lincecum kisses you open-mouthed on the edge of your jaw, quick hot swipe.
You elbow him away, hissing, "Dude, discretion."
"Fuck discretion!" Lincecum pushes close again, a grinning imbecile wholeheartedly convinced of his own indefatigable charm. "I'm about to yell it from fuckin' rooftops. You and me, and this fuckin' team, look, look what we did!"
You shoot a glance at the driver but he doesn't care about you or this idiot teammate who is probably in love with you. The driver is on his dispatch walkie-talkie, speaking a language you can't identify.
"Just try to maintain, will you. We're almost home," you say.
Lincecum takes your arm and hooks it around his shoulders, both hands pressed prayerfully around one of yours. Still big-grinning, crooked teeth and creases and squished eyes in the tempered early-evening light. He smells like beer; everything smells like beer. You sigh and relax against the seat, Tim set into the curve of your body like the two of you were originally carved from a single piece.
San Francisco rolls by outside the windows. You see Lincecum's face ten feet tall on the side of a bus. You see your own hanging from a lamppost. The melancholic sense that so infected you at the ballpark has not abated. You still don't feel that the day's successes have anything to do with you.
In the elevator of your building, Lincecum pulls you down by your shirt collar and kisses you on the mouth. You sorta collapse against the wall, your knees bending to accommodate him.
"Amazing," Lincecum says in a mumble against your lips. That's what he always says, so you don't know what he's talking about, and you don't really want to hear it anyway, and so you kiss him again, a drugging kiss that makes you muffled and slow and heavy-handed.
And then your phone rings. You break away from Lincecum, half-laughing at the ridiculous timing of it, closing your hands around his arms.
"Leave it, just leave it," Lincecum says, and pops open the button on your jeans. Your breath catches tight in your throat, and the elevator dings, doors sliding open at your floor, and it's too much all of a sudden, lights everywhere and a door slamming down the hall. It's barely seven o'clock and you have neighbors, for God's sake, all of whom know your face. Habitual panic slicks momentarily past your defenses.
You get away from Lincecum and pull your phone out of your pocket. With a feeling like the first layer of your heart sheared away, you look down to see Eric Chavez's name glowing brightly in your hand.
It goes quiet, just for a moment. Your mind shows you no memories, nothing to distract you. Chavvy is calling you. He's right there on the other end of the line.
"I have to take this," you say.
"The hell you do. We got plans, fuckin' urgent fuckin' plans," and Lincecum is herding you down to the hallway, pawing at your jeans in an attempt to steal your keys and get into your apartment. He leans up and mouths at your neck, and you have to push him away again, your pulse going like gangbusters and your phone vibrating insistently.
"Here, just, just wait for me for a second, it'll only be a second." You toss him the keys and he gives you a dramatically crushed look but you know that's only a put-on. "Go in, I'll be right there."
Lincecum huffs an exasperated noise, but does as you say. You answer before the door snicks closed, adrenaline as hard as pennies in your mouth.
"Chavvy?"
"Barry Zito, as I live and breathe."
Your knees go shuddery, and you slump against the wall. You haven't spoken to him since that night with Rich Harden in Hayward, and even that was only Harden trying to make things uncomfortable and hence more interesting. Before then, it had been close to a year.
(It's been ten years. The longest decade of your life, the longest you will ever live and you are convinced of that.
Eric Chavez was the point of it all, those first few seasons of your major league career, the unexpected one because you were better friends with Huddy and Mulder was more your type physically, and you always had a tendency to fall for the guys least likely to actually take you up on it (ballplayers, man). The story might read differently, some wretched angsty unrequited thing, but instead it was Chavvy.
Over the course of your life you've had dozens of friends almost exactly like him, SoCal born and bred, baseball-devoted, big fan of Sublime and the Chilis, cool and funny in an awkward kind of way. A completely regular guy, erring on the side of righteousness but you assumed that was humanity's default state at that point (you were still young). The weird thing about Chavez has always been that you can't for the life of you pinpoint what makes him so special.
But so it went, anyway. You remember afternoons dozing in and out of football games, Chavez slumped against you and that sticky stuff he uses in his hair getting on your face. You remember kissing him on the living room floor in a mess of videgame cables and empty beer bottles. Kicking his foot under the table when you were out to dinner with the guys so that he would look up and flash you a smile. Recognizing that it was him hugging you from behind in a walk-off melee, the particular solidity of his chest against your back. Making him laugh so hard he had to put his head down on the bar. Talking for five hours straight on a cross-country flight, a floating gold light above the two of you in the last row of the plane.
It lasted twenty-seven months, and that was the longest you'd ever been with anybody.
Of course it wasn't really like that. You weren't dating so much as convenient. You certainly weren't exclusive. But he was around everywhere you went for a while there, every place you woke up for months at a time. Hotel rooms and rented houses, in your childhood bed when you were both home for Christmas, in the backseat of a dozen different cars--temporary places, individual moments when you were entirely happy and it didn't seem like anything at the time, just the status quo. You were good and your team was good and you had Chavez, and so happiness was a given. It was how the world was supposed to be. You didn't realize what was happening to you until it was too late.
Chavvy stuck with you until it got serious with one of the girls he was screwing around with, and then he drove you home from the ballpark and told you in the underground parking garage of your building, "Listen man, I think I'm gonna give this thing with Alex a real shot," and that was not what you expected him to say.
"Why?" was what came out of your mouth, and he looked surprised, half a hesitant smile.
"'cause she's fuckin' cool, man. Could even go the distance, I dunno."
"But-" and then you stopped. You had been about to say something really stupid.
Chavez touched the side of your neck quickly; that was his thing that he always did, swift brushing fingers on the side of your neck. "No big deal, right? Still friends and all."
And you said, "Yeah of course," and for a second you believed it too. He smiled for real and you felt okay because Chavvy was smiling and so it couldn't be too bad.
You remember standing and staring at the gray concrete after Chavez drove away, red taillights under fluorescent, and then riding up alone in the elevator, the illuminated button for the fourth floor cracked right down the middle and you too, though it would take you months and years to fully understand it--you were broken precisely in half.
So yeah, you were pretty fucking gone on him once upon a time.)
"How are you, man?" you ask him in the here and now.
"Green with envy, what do you think? Congratulations, that's awesome."
"Yeah, thanks. I, um, thank you." You're terrible on the phone, always have been.
"Really good game too," Chavez tells you, and you have to strain to remember--the game itself seems like it happened years ago.
"The boys showed up, they just, you know, it's never easy. God fuckin' forbid it ever be easy. They call it torture over here."
"I heard about that. Fun way to spend your summer, huh?"
"Yeah, our division champs gear came with ulcer medication."
You ripped that line off of Brian Wilson, but nobody has to know. Chavez sorta laughs and turns it into clearing his throat, and then it gets quiet. You push your knuckles into your eye. The thing you hate most in the world is awkward silence, empty air.
"So, so," you say. "How's the fam?"
Another pause, and you are actively holding your breath.
"They're great, it's--it's really great. I mean, it's crazy. Mortgages and kindergarten and car pools and everything. Very grown-up, living the dream and all."
"Say it ain't so," and you're at least sixty percent joking.
"It's cool. It's good." Chavez sounds weirdly uncertain but you're probably just reading into things. He's probably just uncomfortable because he obviously can't ask about your pretty blonde wife and 2.5 kids. "Are you guys going out tonight, or what?"
"Uh, yeah, some of them were. We just came back, though. Long day, like, long month too."
"And it's only just begun. Only gets better from here, if I remember right." Chavez's breath hitches, and then he asks, "Who'm I keeping you from, dude?"
It's casual, light enough, pitched at just the right tone for a former hook-up asking about a current one. It's taken as a point of fact that you've both moved on. Regardless, you flush, the skin on your arms prickling.
"Just one of the guys," you say.
"Yeah, I got a guess or two," Chavez says, teasing and without malice. "Like 'em kinda scrawny, don't you?"
You choke on a laugh, leaning your shoulder against the wall and covering your eyes with your hand. You have this image of Eric Chavez sitting on the floor with his kids climbing over him and napping in his lap, watching the Giants game and smirking at you and Lincecum leaning on the rail together, sitting too close on the bench, bubble-blowing contests and sunflower-seed target practice. You have no doubt that the whole thing is incredibly obvious to someone who knows what they're looking for.
"Ah well you know," you say on one breath. "Always did have a soft spot for a good change-up."
"Blind spot, I think you mean to say."
"Thanks, Chav, always so helpful."
He huffs, but it's his good-tempered huff, amused and willing to tolerate a lot of nonsense from you. "You know you miss me, punk."
You nod. Of course you miss him. "Yeah."
Another pause, and some small piece of the awkwardness has chipped off.
"So, um," Chavez says eventually. "Good luck, I wanted to say good luck."
You almost say 'you too,' but that's just instinct, doesn't make any sense. The A's (still the only team Chavez will ever play for) have spent most of the year ten games back and jockeying for second place with Anaheim; Oakland ended the season at 81-81, a perfect .500.
"Thanks man."
"I mean, like. I talked to Huddy and I wished him good luck too, but that was mostly only 'cause I like him. I think I'm actually pulling for you guys."
You smile. "Everybody with a brain ought to be. We're clearly the good guys in this movie."
"Yeah, until somebody beats the Yankees," Chavez says back.
"We're gonna beat the Yankees," you say, and it feels like taking a punch in the chest, sudden insane certainty blooming in your heart. "We're gonna fucking destroy them, man."
It's the wildest feeling you've ever had, and you've had it before--faith, faith in its purest form. You believe it, you know it, like you know there is a God, like you know your mother loved you, every one of your deepest truths. This team, this year. This time you're not going to have to go home.
Chavez laughs some more, and says, "Well, godspeed from all of us, then."
"Chavvy," and you are laughing somewhat yourself, a breathy mildly hysterical type of thing. You're reeling. "I think, I mean I really think we might get it done, like, all the way."
"Yeah, I've heard that before," Chavez says, but he's not bitter or anything, kinda soft and tolerant because of course he remembers what it was like. "One thing at a time, remember?"
You nod, feeling stupid and giddy and desperate. The other five times you've been to the playoffs, Eric Chavez has been right beside you in one way or another, telling you probably a hundred times, one thing a time. Eleven more games to win and each of them looms like an alien planet that needs to be conquered. Don't get ahead of yourself. There is superstition involved, and unwritten rules: nobody even says the words 'World Series' until the pennant is concretely in hand, champagne raining down.
"Don't think about it so much," Chavez continues, talking you through it like when you were a rookie and had personally traded baseball cards of half the Yankee lineup that you were going to face the next day. "You just throw where he puts the glove, right?"
You swallow hard. You consider telling him that you might not get to throw at all, but you bite it back. Getting left off the playoff roster is the darkest of predictions. It would totally ruin the good feeling of the call.
"Yeah, I try," you say instead. "Listen, I, I should probably get back," because it is doing weird things to you, Chavvy's voice in your ear and this old kind of joy rattling around your bones. It's confusing.
"Oh yeah, go and have your going-to-the-postseason sex. It's pretty awesome, if I'm remembering right."
You snort and roll your eyes, blushing a little because of course he's right. "Get outta here."
"You get outta here, get gone, fuckin' champion of the world and all, like anybody wants to see that."
Big grin from you, all at once and unexpected, your face feeling stretched. The bland snakeish pattern of the wallpaper in the hallway blurs in front of you, and you swipe a hand across your eyes, tell him as honest as anything:
"Wish you were here, man."
He makes a sound you can't identify, can't interpret, and says, "Me too," and then, "Call me sometime, huh? Not just 'cause you win the pennant or whatever."
"I will, Chavvy," and you will not. You know it, you figure he probably does too. You figure everyone at least knows what's going on here.
"Bye man, and good luck, lots more good luck."
You are drowning in it already. Luck runs under everything in this game, right alongside hope and devotion, agony and joy. It's never mattered how much you want it, how hard you've tried. It comes down to whose prayers get answered, and you press one hand flat over your chest, trapping your heart inside.
Even though it still doesn't make any sense you tell him, "You too." You don't say goodbye; you like to leave things open-ended.
It takes you a moment there in the hallway, empty-voiced phone held to your ear. You are aware of your shaking hands, the way your head feels softened, your mind kinda squashed down and barely functioning. You think of a couple things you might have told Chavez, and then you push that stuff aside, pocket your phone and stumble into your apartment.
Lincecum is waiting in the bedroom, and he sits up as you come in, teetering and toeing your shoes off. He's not wearing a shirt, maybe nothing at all under the covers, and in the slanted bedside light he looks very young and very happy, very much out of your league but here you are. You pull your shirt over your head and he grins brilliantly.
"Fuckin' took your time about it, come on."
So impatient, he's on his knees and reaching out for you. Lincecum is wearing his boxers and nothing else, his hands working fast over the buckle of your belt, snicking give of the zipper. You run your hand up his side, smooth warm path of skin and Tim squirming because he's kinda ticklish there.
"I'm gonna steal your phone," Lincecum says, chewing the words into your collarbone. "Throw it off a cliff an' into the ocean."
You take his head in your hands, pull his face up and kiss him for a long time. Eyes closed, fingers in his hair, thumbs on his cheekbones, the bare shivering length of him pressed against you. You're still looking for something. You kiss him until it physically hurts.
Lincecum pulls away gasping, panting. He drags you down onto the bed with him, kicking the blankets off because they only get in the way, rolling you over and wrapping himself around you, legs and arms and everything, hotter than hell. He's still got that nutso grin on his face, his eyes burning and overjoyed. He pushes his fingers across your mouth, and he's staring.
"Fuck man," Tim whispers, awed. "This thing could go the distance, you know that?"
Impossible to describe what it does to you, hearing Tim Lincecum put it in those particular terms. You bury your face in his throat, one hand palming his legs open. There is a breaking feeling in your chest, but maybe it's not all bad, something like tree roots busting up the sidewalk, like a bat shattered on a two-run double in the late innings. Like maybe it's actually worth it.
Your eyes are screwed shut, fighting the good ending because it feels an awful lot like false hope, but fuck it, you've earned some of that. You believe, you believe with your body and soul and heart and life, with everything you are and everything you have. Wherever this team goes, you're going with them.
Tim tugs you up by your hair and kisses you again, and in a fit of baseless romanticism you think that this moment is unlike any that you have ever known.
THE END
Endnotes: The title of this document on my current computer is 'zito,' which is also the title of a document on the computer before last, the document that was Game On, which is the first MLB story I ever wrote. I think me and him are almost exactly at full circle.
and and. oh god i hope we win.