Page 18 of Diamond Ring
Alex retreats to his apartment, breathlessly flipping the latch like they might chase him down for pleasantries. Inside, there’s nothing for him to do. He has everything he needs: space, liquor, solitude. The last of which would be better if Jake were there with him. He pours a couple of fingers of whiskey and puts on music, something teenaged and angry that’s hollowly gratifying. A message pings from Sofia telling him to take what time he needs. He manages a thumbs-up in response.
Nothing from Jake. Unusual for any day but particularly today. Like Jake left and got in his truck and went and did something stupid. Like Alex should go after him.
He drinks enough that the jagged feeling in his chest starts to smooth. He checks his phone a few times—nothing—then sends one more message.Text me when you get this.
Another half an hour goes by. No Jake. Alex is ready to start calling guys from the team when someone pounds on his door.
“I’m coming,” Alex yells. Maybe he should have pretended not to be home. Maybe it’s an irate fan or, worse, a reporter.
When he looks through the peephole, there’s Jake, distorted by the lens.
Alex opens the door. Jake is disheveled, red-eyed, drunk. Alex tugs him inside. Jake sways as he walks, an unsteady gait like he’s going to wipe out on the floor. He makes it onto the couch.
“I’ll get you some water.” Alex grabs two bottles from the fridge. When he gets back, Jake has the whiskey bottle and is drinking deeply.
“Fuck.” Jake wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Fuck.”
“Yeah.” Because what else is there to say?
Normally Jake is a happy drunk because Jake is normally happy. Now he’s slumped on the middle cushion of Alex’s couch, listing to one side. Alex sits next to him, takes the bottle from where it’s loosely curled in his fingers, and sets it on the coffee table.
“I couldn’t,” Jake says. “After the game, I couldn’t stick around. They were gonna ask me stuff and I didn’t know what to tell ’em.”
“I about bit theEast Bay Tribuneguy’s head off.”
“Tomorrow’s gonna suck.”
“Yeah.” Because all that’s waiting for them is a hangover. Media. Both.
“I thought it would help,” Jake says. “Being drunk. That I’d forget somehow. That it’d make everything go away.”
“Don’t think it works like that.” Jake’s sitting close, close enough to smell the familiar scent of his soap. He scrubs at his eye with the heel of his hand. Alex pulls a couple of Kleenex from the box sitting on his coffee table. “Here.”
“I’m good.” But Jake takes them and blows his nose, then tosses the wadded-up tissues into a wastebasket with a pitcher’s accuracy. “What were you doing before I got here?”
“Listening to angry music and seething at the universe.”
Jake laughs, though it sounds empty. He tips toward Alex, landing so that he’s resting against Alex’s chest. He pulls back. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” A pause like he overstepped, then Jake eases himself back onto Alex’s shoulder.
“Remember that time,” Jake says, and Alex can feel it when he talks, the rumble of his voice and the pressure of his fingertips through Alex’s shirt, “I got you from that bar.”
“You said I owed you.” Jake’s hair is reddish, wavy, soft when Alex runs his fingers through it, his body a pleasant, if drunken, weight.
“We could watch a movie or something,” Jake says nonsequitorially.
Alex shifts to pick up the remote to see if there’s anything on, expecting Jake to move back to the other side of the couch. He doesn’t, instead adjusting so that Alex can turn the TV on and pull up the Netflix menu.
“Something you have in mind?” Alex asks.
He means a movie, though Jake gets a momentary look like he’s going to say something else before shaking his head. “Can you forget I’m here for a while?”
Alex doesn’t know how he’s supposed to do that with Jake resting on him. “Sure,” he lies.
He picks a movie at random and loses himself in Jake’s slow breathing, the outline of his lips pressed to Alex’s shirt collar. The living room is half in shadow, lit only by the TV glare and the distant hallway light. Jake makes soft noises, the kind that precede sleep. Guys sometimes razz them for beingclose, for being Jake-and-Alex like a matched set. But there’s close in a thrown-together baseball way and close in a way that comes from Jake not wanting to be withpeopleso he came to see Alex.
If this is all Alex gets—the whiskey smell of Jake’s breath and the cling of his fingers in Alex’s shirt like Alex might make him let go—then he wants to remember it, even if Jake probably won’t in the morning. How the tip of Jake’s nose drags against his collarbone. How his stubble scrapes against Alex’s neck. He murmurs something that sounds like how he might say Alex’s name in bed, and Alex should get up, get more water, make Jake sober up by doing something other than sleeping on top of him, pressed close and impossibly distant.
