Page 78 of The Jock
“What?” Wes turned. Colton was furious, all dark lines and rage, scowling as he strangled the football in his hands. Wes frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“All your bullshit yesterday. All that fucking bullshit about us being a team, and you needing us, and you being nothing without us. That’s fucking bullshit! All you care about is yourself!”
“That’s not true! I love this team!”
“You have a fucking funny way of showing that.”
“What did you expect me to do? Announce my first day of training camp freshman year that I’m gay?”
Colton hurled the football into the concrete wall at the end of the row of lockers. It ricocheted off, landing with a hurdy-gurdy bounce in the second-string defense locker bay. “You knew you were gay freshman year?”
“I’ve known I was gay since I was nine.”
“And you never told me!” Colton roared. “You never told any of us!”
He kept his mouth shut. No, he never had. Because this was the reaction he’d feared. This was exactly the reaction he’d feared.
Colton ran his hands through his long hair. He was half dressed, like Wes, in his pants and his Under Armour but missing his pads and his jersey. He paced away. Kicked a locker so hard the metal buckled. “You treated us like we’re goddamn pawns in your fucking show-off game.”
“Colton—”
“Three years. Three fucking years, and you didn’t say a fucking thing.”
“Why would I? When this is what happens?”
“It’s not that you’re gay!” Colton roared. “It’s that you lied to us! Fuck, yesterday we were talking about your girl! Right here! Right fucking here! You let us all believe you were head over heels for some perfect girl you met in Paris! Not fuckinghim!”
“Don’t you dare say anything about Justin,” Wes growled. “You can hate me all you want. You leave him out of it.”
“He did something to you. You say you’ve always been gay, but you’ve never been like this. What the hell did he do to you—”
“Shut your mouth!”
“Or what? You’ll lie to me again?”
He turned away, grabbing onto the sides of his locker.
“I asked you to your face, on the bus, what was going on. Iaskedyou.” Colton shook his head. “What is it about him that made you turn your back on us? That made you lie to us? To your team? Tome? Was his mouth that fucking good? Did his blow jobs rock your world that much—”
He didn’t remember moving. He didn’t remember pulling back his fist or letting it fly. He blinked, and Colton was on the ground, holding his jaw, glaring up at Wes with shock in his eyes.
Colton laughed. It was an ugly, horrible sound, and it made Wes’s skin crawl. “You should see your face, man,” Colton said. He spat blood on the locker room floor. Pushed himself to his feet. “You look like you just punched your best friend. Newsflash, jackass: I’m not your fucking friend anymore. I’m not friends with people who lie to me. Or who use me.”
“I didn’t use you—” He tried to reach for him. Colton ripped his arm away. “I’m sorry,” Wes choked out.
“You think punching me is so bad? How could you possibly do anything worse than what you’ve already fucking done?” Colton shook his head. He grabbed his pads and his helmet and turned his back on Wes, striding out of the locker room and leaving Wes alone in the wreckage of his life.
* * *
When he joggedout onto the field, a ripple went through the stands, through the fans already in their seats two hours before the game. He heard the boos, the jeers. His skin crawled. He wanted to jump out of his skeleton.
Coach looked right through him as if he wasn’t even there. He spoke to some distant point over Wes’s shoulder, even though Wes was standing right in front of him. “You have made a grave mistake.”
“Coach—”
“This is not the time for your lips to be moving. The time for you to open your mouth was months ago. Maybe even years ago. You put a bomb at the heart of this team and played with the detonator, and now you’re shocked and shaken that everything’s fallen apart, huh?” Coach shook his head. Glared at the scoreboard. “I warned you, Wes. I warned you what would happen.”
“It’s my private life—”
