Page 5 of The Quarterback
The team had been conditioning together for weeks, following an indulgent month off after winning the national championship in January. They’d done hours of drills that morning, the whole team starting belly-down on the yard lines, then rolling to their backs at the sound of a whistle. Then moving again into a front-leaning rest, waiting, waiting. When the whistle blew for the third time, they leaped to their feet and sprinted ten yards, stutter-stepped, and then dropped into five push-ups before putting their chests to the grass and waiting to begin again.
God, he loved it.
His legs were burning, lactic acid thrumming through every muscle. Even his hands were aching in that good, solid pulse of a healthy workout. In a few minutes they’d start their scrimmage, which was the real highlight of spring football. Once a week, they had a friendly offense vs. defense scrimmage, with thudding instead of tackling—until the final practice, when it was a full game, orange vs. white. Thousands came out to watch.
Colton tossed the ball to himself as he jogged backward, letting the soreness in his quads and hamstrings open up, work itself out. Yeah, he’d made the right call staying for his senior year. The NFL draft had taken place without him, and if he’d thought the professional sports world would care or make note of his absence, he was wrong. As soon as he’d made it clear he wasn’t going to declare for the draft, EPSN stopped talking about him, focusing instead on all the draftees in front of their faces. It had been a bucket of water to his face when he went from daily headlines to nothing overnight. The NFL was a business, not a passion, and you were a commodity, only as valuable as what you brought to the league. When teams thought he was a chance for their rebuilding season, he’d been hot shit. Otherwise, he was nothing.
He’d spent long nights staring at his ceiling, tossing the ball over his face and catching the lazy spiral before it hit him between the eyes. His whole life, he’d wanted to play professional football, had wanted to wear that NFL jersey.
But what he’d dreamed about when he was seven, eight, nine years old was the camaraderie, the team spirit, the football family. He’d wanted the joyous locker rooms, the long days and nights of practice, of working out in the gym. Training together and being men together, leaning their lives into one another so that they became something bigger, more incredible than they were on their own. Super Bowl champions sounded like a good place to start, to his nine-year-old mind.
National college champs wasn’t too bad, either.
Had he already found the camaraderie he’d hungered for? He’d never been on a team so close-knit. With Wes as captain and him as starting quarterback, they’d been on fire. Their successes had bonded them all.
Was it the success, though? Or was it Thanksgiving? When they had collapsed, broken apart beneath the crushing weight of a predatory news article published to destroy them on the morning of their biggest game of the year. When someone outside the team had taken Wes’s secret and splashed it across every website, sports blog, newspaper, and radio show nationwide.
That reporter had used Wes’s love for Justin like cheap bullets fired at the rest of the team.
And they’d crumbled, destroyed by what felt like betrayal—but it hadn’t been, not at all. They’d thought Wes had used them for his own glory, had kept his secret about Justin and his sexuality so he could take everything he could from their team on his path to stardom. They were so, so wrong. Wes had given up everything in his life for the team time and again, but Justin was the only thing he couldn’t give up. The secret to why Wes had leveled the fuck up last season wasn’t protein powder or special supplements or a new training regimen. He was in love, head over heels, and he played his heart out for Justin each week. He gave everything he had to the gridiron and to the man he loved in equal measure.
It was realizing that, recognizing that, more than anything else, that had brought the team back together. Shock and agony gave way to heartbreak, then emptiness, sorrow, and regret.Whyhad filled their shared house after, a thousand variations onWhy didn’t you tell usandWhy didn’t I see itandWhy does this hurt so muchandWhy why why.
Why had that hack journalist ripped Wes’s heart out? Why had he tried to destroy their team? Why had they let him? Why didn’t they listen to Wes? And why was Wes gone?
They got their answers in time, even if they wished they didn’t.
It was an excruciating lesson to learn, and it was something that couldn’t ever be taught by a coach or a PowerPoint slide or a book. They’d all had to look inside themselves and realize their own failings, their own judgments. They didn’t collapse because of the article, or because of Wes’s secret, or because of the game. They collapsed because of themselves. A hundred crumblings, a hundred scared boys who had pretended to be men, who didn’t know how to stand up next to Wes and be the men he needed in that moment.
They grew up fast, though. Anguish and loss had a way of separating the children from the men. Reflection, too, and the solitude of staring at one’s own actions.
They almost hadn’t had the chance to tell Wes they were sorry.
Colton said it a dozen different ways, trying to be for Wes what Wes had been for the team. Be there, give everything of himself. Dedicate every minute of his life to Wes and his recovery. Get to know Justin, the love of Wes’s life, because Justin clearly wasn’t going anywhere. And if he’d been nervous about befriending Justin, uncertain whether there was a place for Colton in Wes’s new life next to the man he’d given his heart to, well, Justin had helped put that fear to rest. Colton liked Justin a lot, more than he thought he would. Justin was sharper than Wes was, harder edges and more bite. He shoveled the shit he’d been dished daily, flinging it right back at the world without blinking. He had a confidence that, even to a Division I jock, was a gut check. He was absolutely certain about who he was and where he fit in the world, and that was rare for people their age. Colton could see why Wes, one of the most solid men he knew, had fallen so hard for Justin.
There were days when it felt like Justin and Wes were men, and Colton and some of the rest of the guys on the team were still boys, despite them all being the same age. They lived in the same house and did the same things, watching TV and playingMaddenand eating Pop-Tarts and cereal and goofing off on the foosball table, but still. He sometimes felt a gulf opening between Wes and Justin and everyone else. Wes and Justin and him, even, though they were the closest of everyone.
Was it them falling in love? Was it their commitment to each other? Was there something about building a life with another person that made you change, broadened and deepened your perspectives in life, made you aware of the larger, fuller picture of the world?
What would his own life be like if he weren’t thinking about whether the NFL draft was the right choice for him alone? What if he were making a decision forweinstead ofme?
Yeah, that would pull a guy from being a boy to being a man. The way he’d devoted himself to Wes and his recovery, making all his choices for Wes and their brotherhood and for the team, had changed him, made him grow quickly.
But he still felt like he was behind Wes and Justin. That they had taken steps into a new world he was on the outside of.
He tossed the ball again, spiraling it up into the air and catching it in front of his face mask.
Was choosing another year at Texas hiding? Was he Peter Panning his life? All he wanted was professional football, right? He’d made it; he had the NFL invite. He had his chance.
There was something more he wanted, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was yet. He couldn’t name it, couldn’t put words to it, but it felt like something that moved inside him when he was in the locker room, or when the team was practicing, or when everyone was smiling after a great practice. The buzz he got in his veins when he and Wes and Justin and even Nick all went out on Thursday nights. It was the way the world seemed perfect when he wasn’t alone. When he felt like he was part of something wonderful.
Leave Wes? Now, when he’d finally really met him? And Justin?
No, there was more here. He was sure of it. More to find, more to become. He had the bones and the heart of a man but the trepidations of a boy. He didn’t want to go. Not yet. He wanted the team, and he wanted more of the soul-deep connection he and Wes had forged and wrapped their team in.
Not yet. He wasn’t ready to let go yet.
One more year.
