Page 28 of Honeysuckle
“Not like childhood scars, or fight scars. I’m talking…” My stomach churned at the memory of Josh’s back. “They look inflicted. I don’t know.”
“Inflicted upon him?” Silas questioned.
“Yeah, like someone hurt him, hundreds of times. They look like scratches or small cuts from a knife and they’re all about two inches long. Some overlap.” I couldn’t help the gag that surfaced from just thinking about the pain he’d felt from whatever happened.
I expected Silas to say something,anything, to make me feel better about the situation, but he slumped against his chair with a devastating look on his face. He rubbed his face over his hand and let his head fall backwards with a huff. I’d never seen him so disgruntled.
“That would explain why he was so insistent,” he grumbled.
“That’s it?” I scoffed. "No intrigue, no worry?”
“What are we supposed to do about it, Dean? He’s made it clear he doesn’t want anyone asking questions, he probably forged those clearance papers and now I have phone calls to make so go eat some breakfast and if I find anything out on my end I’ll let you know.” Silas sat up and went straight back to his paperwork, rifling through them until he found what he needed and grabbed his phone. “Tucker, go eat.”
I stared at him for a second longer before pushing out of my seat and leaving the office. Something felt wrong, like the world was off balance. If an incident like Silas was describing occurred…combined with the state of Josh’s body. Something bad had happened to turn him so cold and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to get it out of him. Or if I even wanted to know in the first place.
Maybe ignorance was bliss.
I skipped breakfast and walked my sweaty ass to the baseball field, scooping up a crate of balls and a bat before taking out my frustrations with heavy-hearted swings. Each ball cracked off the bat, loosening the tightness in my shoulders and disconnected me from my problems.
I wasn’t exactly grateful for Josh and all his issues, but the distraction from everything else going on in my life had proven to be nice. I’d barely even thought about my parents over the last few days, or the looming cloud that hung over my head over being true to myself and doing it on a public scale.
It was different now though. Would Harbor accept a gay captain? Was that any way to start the season?“Hey, we’re probably going to lose. Oh, and guess what? Your captain’s gay! Surprise!”I huffed and tossed another ball in the air, swinging hard and cracked the ball to the outfield.
“Maybe that’s for the best. Rip the bandaid off; have all of Harbor and my entire family disown me in one go…” I said to myself and swung at another ball.
I could hear my mother’s disappointment in my head, echoing around like the shrill sounds of a horror movie.“Franklin, you can’t do this to our family. What will your father’s colleagues think? What about my future grandchildren?”
“Hey, Mom, adoption exists…” I grumbled to no one. And even if it didn’t, did I even want to have kids? The problems had dog-piled and I’d never had a moment to sort out the important from the frivolous. They all just seemed so heavy when they were weighing down on my chest.
The anxiety of coming out was only worsened by the aftermath of doing something as big as announcing my sexuality to people who wouldn’t love me for it. My siblings would call–Anna would flip out and ask me how I could do such a thing to my mother, and Harvey would mail me brochures on conversion camps that his friends passed around the office as they created harmful bills to control the bodies of people they didn’t even consider to be human.
It made me sick to my stomach.
“Fuck!” I turned and slammed the bat into the nearest tree, over and over again, until the wood splintered and the handle of the bat rubbed raw against the palms of my hands. Every ounce of frustration vibrated in my forearms and across my chest as the anger and disappointment everyone felt in my presence flooded from me.
I wasn’t the golden boy.
I was a fucking failure.
A gay son without anyone to love him, watching a baseball team slip through his fingers. That’s who I was and it felt like there was nothing I could do to fix it.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I screamed and threw the destroyed bat into the woods, completely out of breath. I wiped the tears and sweat from my face and then turned around to find Josh, standing by the backstop, watching me with those endless dark eyes.
LOGAN
Thesoundofwoodsnapping beneath Dean Tucker’s rage-fueled weight echoed in my head as I wandered into the mess hall for lunch.. He had stood there like a child caught red handed but hadn’t said a word otherwise.
I backed away from him and didn’t see him again until practice. He’d shown up with that dumb, bright smile and positive attitude, like he hadn’t disintegrated a wooden bat against a tree an hour earlier. It was both perplexing and infuriating.
He ran practice the same way he had all week—switching players, blindfolding us, forcing communication until we could run a play without stumbles or accidents. I managed to get my hands on a roster. Ella was more than willing to help and I was starting to see why they all went to bat for her so often. It was maddening.
I woke up even earlier and, after a quick run, I found a quiet spot to study their names, but there were so many of them and Dean continued to switch out the teams, forcing me to figure out who was who on a strangled timeline.
The worst part of it all was that seeing Dean so worked up actually made me like him more. The show pony he was in front of everyone else was sickening and fake. I felt drawn to the anger that he was hiding; the frustration he rarely let bubble to the surface. I found myself wanting to know more and that was the last thing I needed. I refused to let the inkling of curiosity derail my focus. Baseball, winning season, graduate. Get the fuck out of Harbor.
That was the short list.
Theonlylist.
