Page 79 of The Jock
“It’s not!” Coach pushed right up into Wes’s face, finally looking at him. “I told you they would turn your life upside down. Turn you inside out. You want a private life? A secret boyfriend? Then you keep that shit private! You don’t go flaunting it all over Paris or all over this campus! At the very least, you should have come to the team, or to me, with this. Given us a goddamn heads-up that this was a possibility. That one morning we might wake up to some news. We’d be able to handle it together, then. But no, that’s not what you decided.”
He paced away from Wes, shaking his head. “You think you’re paying for it, but it’s not just you. The whole team is about to suffer for your decisions.”
This was what he’d so desperately wanted to avoid. Everything he’d done, every choice he’d made, he’d thought it had all been for the team. For them.
How wrong, how horribly wrong he’d been.
“I’m ignoring ten calls from the NCAA. I can’t ignore them much longer. It looks like there’s going to be an investigation. No one really understands what you’ve done. Did you misrepresent yourself? Make false statements? Cause the university to earn more money than they would have if you’d been out? There’s going to be an inquiry into your life. Into the choices you made and didn’t make.”
Wes looked away, staring at the brittle blue sky over the scoreboard. It was a perfect day for football. A bite to the air, the open sky so pure and wide it felt like the lid had been lifted off the world. Not a cloud in sight. Slight breeze, just enough to tickle the skin but not to interfere with any passes. The perfect day for the end of everything. No more football. No more scholarship. No more college. No more future.
He tried to keep his chin from quivering. “I understand, Coach.”
“I don’t think you do. Not yet.” Coach took a step back. “You’ll warm up on your own before today’s game. Run, Wes. Run until I say stop.”
He set off around the field. He tasted salt with every ragged inhale.
When he and Colton walked out for the coin flip, half of the stadium booed as his name was announced. Colton ignored him, wouldn’t even look at him. Wes kept his helmet on to hide his swollen, red-rimmed eyes. He turned away when the cameraman tried to zoom in to his face.
They lost the coin flip. The captains of the other team only shook Colton’s hand. They left Wes hanging, his hand in the air, as if he didn’t even exist.
Mississippi elected to receive, and in under two minutes, they marched up the field for an easy touchdown, putting seven points on the board with barely any effort.
The sideline around Wes was deathly silent. No one spoke. No one joked around or tried to rally any excitement. Clusters of Wes’s teammates sat in stony silence.
He trotted out onto the field with Colton and the offense as the stadium erupted into a mix of weak cheers and deep, thunderous booing. Never, in his whole time at the school, had their team been booed. Shame ran thick and hot in his blood as he set up on the line.
“Hey fag.” One of the Mississippi linebackers leaned over his defensive end. He blew Wes three kisses. “Coming for you, fag.”
Colton called the snap late, and the play was doomed from the first quarter second. The offensive line was slow. Colton didn’t have good pass protection. He was under pressure too soon, and he couldn’t set up for a deep pass. Orlando was under coverage, and he wasn’t an option for a dump pass. Wes was on a slant route, the third bailout option for Colton.
He was open.
Colton’s eyes flicked to Wes’s. Wes saw the moment Colton decided not to throw, to keep the ball even though the offensive line had crumbled and a linebacker was coming right for him. He looked away from Wes, curled over the ball, and took the sack, hitting the field with a sick crunch, pads on pads. Half a second later, Wes was tackled from behind, technically a late hit, but so close to the end of the play it would never be called. He hit the dirt hard, his helmet digging into the grass deep enough that his face mask ripped it up. He grunted, tried to throw his tackler off.
“Like that, fag?” The same linebacker. He thrust his hips against Wes’s ass, once, twice. “I’m going to fucking destroy you.” And then he was up, clapping his hands for the television cameras, trying to pump up the crowd as he ran back to the defensive huddle.
Wes pushed himself up slowly. Ten yards behind him, Colton was doing the same. Art helped Colton to his feet. No one helped Wes.
He was a ghost in the huddle. He was never chosen as the pass receiver. When he blocked, he was left all alone, isolated, and the defensive guards tag teamed him, steamrolling him to the ground and leaving him choking on dirt.
By the end of the first drive, it was clear: the team had collapsed. Nothing worked. Not their plays, not their rhythm. Not their drive. None of the strength Coach had talked about the day before was there. None of the love they had for each other was on the field. Maybe it was gone forever.
The sideline was a seething mass of fury. Colton hurled his helmet to the ground after being sacked for the sixth time. The offensive line was fighting each other, throwing blame left and right. Orlando screamed at the offensive coordinator until he got his pads grabbed and he was thrown down to the bench to cool off. The defense was a broken bunch of lost souls, watching the offense collapse and feeling the ebb of failure suck their confidence like water racing away from the shore before a tsunami. They were raw tempers and naked fury, exposed nerves and hair triggers.
It took nothing at all to strike the match that lit the fuse.
Orlando shoved Wes in their locker room at the half. “Are you fucking happy?” he roared. “Happy with what you did?”
“I’m not playing like crap out there!” Wes snapped back. “I’m open! But Colton isn’t throwing to me!”
Colton snorted. He wouldn’t even look at Wes, hadn’t looked at him since he’d made the decision not to pass to him. He shook his head. His lip was split and swollen, and he was flexing and unflexing his throwing arm. Bruises were blossoming along his side from all the tackles he’d taken.
“Man, he can’t throw to you!” Art snapped. “You’ve got a damn target on your back. You can’t take a single step without getting your ass thrown to the ground.”
“Maybe if I had some coverage, I’d get somewhere!”
“Oh,nowyou want our help?” Art bellied up to Wes, flanked by Josh and Patrick. “Nowyou need us? Now you want us? That’s not how it works, motherfucker!”
