Page 8 of The Jock
Usually, there was more of a sardonic edge to that question, turning it into an accusation, an indictment. Usually, Justin’s hackles rose. But not today. “I do,” he breathed, trailing his fingers down the advertisement forSwan Lake. The production was going for the next month. Maybe he could find a way to see it. “It’s beauty and power wrapped together. It may look delicate, but it's not. At all. I love the absolute rawness of ballet.”
Wes blinked. His eyes scanned the posters again. Raw was not a word used to describe ballet very often, but it was true. Raw power, iron control. Ballerinas were cheetahs, so much capacity and potential and skill constrained into each fine movement. “Never thought of it that way,” Wes rumbled. “But yeah. Look at him.” He jerked his chin to the danseur in the midst of his leap. “That’s a lot of power right there. I know football players that would be jealous of that jump.”
Justin beamed. His heart fluttered. “Exactly. The athleticism, it’s…” He sighed.
“Do you dance?” Wes eyed him, his gaze running down Justin’s body, lingering at his hips and thighs. “You have the strength.”
He turned away. Paced down the row of posters, letting the dancers’ faces swim in front of him. “Not seriously. I love ballet, but I’m not any good at it. Not enough to really chase it. I’m a better modern dancer. I was on the drill team in high school.” He’d joined his junior year, after he’d finally burst the bubble of his parent’s fantasies. He wasn’t going to play baseball anymore. He was one of four guys on the drill team, and they were all very, very gay. He’d lost his virginity to one in the back of the bus on the way to an out-of-town football game.
Wes was quiet. “Our drill team was the color guard,” he finally said. “They did both. Color guard girls were usually the ones the cheerleading captain didn’t pick at tryouts.”
“It was pretty serious in Dallas. More than a few girls went to try out for the Cowboys cheerleaders and made it after being on the drill team.”
“You must have been good, then, to be on the team.” Wes bumped his shoulder. When did he get so close? “And you do know a little bit about football if you were on the drill team. You were at the games for your school.”
Justin laughed. “I spent most of my time in the stands gossiping, but yeah, I guess I know a bit.” He knew which of the running backs had the best butt, and which quarterback had gotten drunk over spring break and let a guy give him a blow job.
Halfway back to their hotel, Justin ducked into a restaurant and came out with a bottle of wine. Wes tried to protest, tried to dig out some euros from his pocket, but Justin waved him off. There was something swimming in his veins, some kind of electricity that he needed to bleed off. Thoughts he shouldn’t be thinking. Hopes he shouldn’t be pinning to the sky. Getting drunk was a tried-and-true way to erase his mind.
They tipped wine into the same coffee mugs they drank from each morning, sitting cross-legged in front of their window and watching the Paris night come to life. The Eiffel Tower lit up across the city, twinkling like a thousand fireflies had come together for a brilliant show. He sighed, sipping his merlot, and slumped against the windowsill. Paris in summertime, and his heart was pitter-pattering. His eyes slid sideways, to Wes, the cowboy football player he could have met any other day in Texas, on campus, even, but who he’d met here. In the city of love.
He was so screwed. This was going to come crashing down, like it always did. This was going to end in pain, and regret, and wishing he’d never, ever tried.Don’t do it,his mind whispered.You can’t be friends with him.
And another part of him whispered back,I’m not sure what I want with this man is friendship. Not anymore.
Chapter Three
Wes splashedwater on his face, washing away the remnants of shaving cream. Droplets ran down his neck and the valley between his pecs. He felt the cool touch like fingers on his skin, skittering all the way to his waist. Like Justin’s fingers, stroking—
He squeezed the edge of the porcelain sink, hard enough his arms trembled. He tipped his head forward, closing his eyes as water dripped from his nose, his chin. All his life he’d fought this. He’d choked this want, this desire, ever since the day he declared to his father he was going to marry the ranch foreman or one of the cowboys down from Montana. He’d been young enough to get away with it, get called hilarious instead of a freak. He’d been laughed at.
He kept his crush on the foreman secret after that. Stopped watching the hands work shirtless as they fed the horses, changed the hay, cleaned the stalls. Kept his mouth shut and waited, and waited, and waited for his eyes to start wandering to the girls and their bouncy ponytails at school, to focus on curves and skirt hems instead of happy trails and tight asses and bulges. It never happened. He stared at the inside of his locker when everyone changed, memorizing the same square inches of battered metal and balled-up socks. Maybe he could fake it, he thought. Or force himself to like girls.
In high school, sophomore year, he’d dated Lisa. She broke up with him when he wouldn’t go all the way in her back seat on the fourth date. Senior year, Marietta got him into a bedroom at a house party, when he was a few beers past common sense, and got his pants down and her mouth on him before he found that sense again. She was trying to get her own pants off when he pushed her back gently, told her no, and then held her when she cried. She was one of the desperate girls his senior year, looking at grades that weren’t good enough for a scholarship and no money in the bank to afford college tuition. Her only hope out of that town was to hitch her wagon to a boy on his way up, and who better than the top tight end in the state with a full-ride scholarship in the big city? “I’m sorry,” he’d told her in that dark room. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
He couldn’t force it. And he didn’t want to try.
But he couldn’t go out and find a boyfriend, either. He could count the number of out pro NFL players on one hand, and the number of out football players currently at the Division I-A level in college was zero. Coming out, at his level? The guys who had worked their way up dreamed of that NFL contract, hungered for it so deeply it gnawed at their bones, filled their veins with poisonous hope. An entire team of dreamers, each one fixated on a shared goal: winning. Championships. Scouts. One team, one purpose.
Who the hell was he to break that focus? Strike out from the team, be himself? The selfishness of that thought made his stomach turn inside out, made his lungs stop and his heart stutter. There were all kinds of platitudes, pretty talk on posters about being yourself and embracing who you were, but when a hundred other guys depended on you, being yourself wasn’t an option. He was part of a team, part of a machine, and he was helping every one of those guys achieve their dreams, scrape stars from the sky as they reached for futures hidden behind the moon. All their lives, they’d been told if they worked hard enough, they could get there. But they couldn’t do it on their own—none of them could.
He’d be damned if he was going to be the one who shattered everyone’s dreams because he was different. Different didn’t work on the team.
What happened to teams when guys tried to come out? When it went ten kinds of sideways and everything collapsed? When everything was different, suddenly, and what was out of the closet couldn’t get wrestled back in?
His life wasn’t awful. He had his friends—hell, he had best friends. His teammates. He had his dad. They had each other, after Mama. He had the team, and Coach Young. He had a scholarship and a plan for the future. He wasn’t quite sure his future was filled with the same brightly lit NFL dreams as his teammates’. Maybe, once all his friends were set in their star-studded futures, when they were living in the worlds they drew on their bedroom ceilings every night, he could raise his eyes and take a look at the things he’d stiff-armed away.
Later. In the future. Not now. Not here. Not when he was on the verge of being named the starting tight end, when the rumors were he’d been a serious consideration for the Heisman Trophy last year—and if he had the same kind of season this year, he would be a shoo-in and an obvious first-round draft pick if he tossed his name into the great NFL draft hat.
He’d worked too hard to get here. Too many people were relying on him. Too many dreams were laid across his shoulders. He’d had to bulk up to carry them all, gain forty pounds last year alone. There was no room for his own dreams, his tender hopes. He kept his mouth shut, like he’d learned when he was five.
He breathed out, quick exhales like he was at practice, primed and ready for the snap. Watched water drop into the sink. Heard the splash hit the porcelain. He could do this. He could spend the day with Justin, wandering Paris, exploring and sightseeing—just the two of them in the city of love. He could ignore his crush. Bully it away like he’d always done. Focus.
When he closed his eyes, even to blink, he saw Justin’s face. Heard his voice, the sharp lilt of his words. Felt the force of Justin’s smile smack him in his gut, felt his lungs squeeze as he tried to breathe through the way his skin felt too small and his bones too large. Like he was going to float off the earth every time Justin looked at him with that light in his eyes.
It was probably just the sun. It probably wasn’t what he wanted it to be.
And it didn’t matter if it was. He couldn’t do anything about this.
