Page 21 of Touchdown

“Fuck the team-building exercise, Brandon! There’s something going on with Cody, I know it! He wouldn’t just quit unless there was something seriously wrong. I’m not just leaving him in pain while there’s anything I can do about it.”

I realize that Brandon and most of the team are staring at me. “What?”

“You really care about him,” Brandon says softly.

I swallow a sudden lump in my throat. “I do.”

Cody and I have a special connection. Given time to grow, I believe it could become something truly spectacular… but Cody has cut that possibility short.

Well, it’s not gone forever, not yet. I’m determined of that much.

“Fine. I suppose we’ve done enough team building for the time being. There’s no point in continuing when we’re all going to be worried about Cody anyway. Let’s head out, and you update us when you get hold of him, okay, Luke?”

“Of course,” I say distractedly, already heading to my tent. The sooner we get packed up, the sooner we can get out of here.

I make the call the moment we’re all packed into the bus. The team is uncharacteristically quiet. They seem almost as worried as I am, which makes sense. They care about Cody too, albeit in a slightly different way than I do.

Cody doesn’t answer.

I call five times before sending him a series of text messages. They all show as delivered but not read.

Well, I’m not giving up that easily. I know where Cody lives—we exchanged addresses with the idea of staying over at each other’s places some nights. If he doesn’t want to answer, I’m going to get answers myself.

I know it’s borderline stalkerish to force myself on him like this, but I can’t stand the idea that he may be alone and in pain, shutting himself away from the world. If we talk and he tells me that he truly doesn’t want to see me, I’ll back off, but first, I need to assure myself that he’s alright.

The rest of the team tries to talk to me on the drive back, probably in an effort to distract me and make me look slightlyless pitiful, but it doesn’t work. All I can think of is the way Cody cried last night. I wish I had pushed harder for him to talk to me. Perhaps if I had, none of this would have happened.

We get back to the team headquarters and I say a quick goodbye to everyone, not even stopping for a real hot shower before getting into my car and driving straight to Cody’s place.

I hurry to the front door and ring the bell.

No answer. I ring several more times before knocking on the door.

“Cody! Cody, please let me in. I just want to talk. Cody? At least let me know that you’re alive in there.”

“Go away, Luke.”

Well, he’s alive and conscious, that’s something. “Please, talk to me. What’s going on? Is it something I did? Whatever it is, we can work it out. You just need to let me in.”

No response. Fuck.

I spend a solid half hour pleading with the closed door, but I don’t even know if Cody is still listening on the other side. I ring the bell and knock until my knuckles are bruised, but for all the response I get, the house may as well have been empty.

I sit slumped on the porch, sending Cody frankly pathetic texts, begging him to talk to me. They go from delivered to read, and still no response.

After half an hour, I realize that this is doing no good. Cody has made it clear that he doesn’t want to talk to me and forcing my presence on him isn’t helping anything.

I press my hand against the door. “I’m here when you want to talk, Cody. Please, don’t ever forget that.”

I go to my car, wiping tears from my face as I walk.

The next few days are brutal. We’re still on leave from practice, so I have nothing to distract me from my thoughts of Cody. I keep going over every moment we spent together, and the more I go through it, the more I’m convinced that Cody andI could have had something great together, if he’d just given it a bit more of a chance.

I still can’t figure out what went wrong. Things were going so well, and then it all suddenly just fell apart.

When I finally go back to practice, it’s a relief just to have something to take my mind off Cody.

What I don’t expect is the weird looks I keep getting. I mean, I knew everyone was aware that Cody and I were having sex, but they had no way of knowing exactly how close we’d become. They couldn’t know that I’ve spent the past few days when I’ve not been in the gym or at practice, in bed being miserable.

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