Page 43 of The Road to Home Base
“You’re staying with me for the next few days,” my big brother told me. “You’ll be safe here.”
Safe. Something I had once taken for granted.
Something I would never take for granted again.
Chapter Thirteen
Rome
IHADN’TFELTnerves this severe since my first MLB game. My stomach clamped together, fingertips went numb along with my toes. Even my vision narrowed into a tunnel. I had been hyperventilating until Hiroshi slugged me in the arm to shake me from near hysteria. That helped ground me while we flew thirty-thousand feet somewhere over Georgia. I had told both Hiroshi and Emma I wanted to tell the guys as early in the flight as possible.
We all sat in leathered luxury. The New England Riders was one of the few MLB teams that had their own airplane. Rows of twin leather chairs lined the majority of the fuselage with a wide aisle in between. I sat near the front and had been resting my elbows on my knees after the captain announced we reached cruising altitude. Emma wasn’t too far, sitting closer to the front of the plane and staring at me the whole time. She suggested I use the intercom but that felt odd to me. She also assured me that the staff and flight attendants onboard had all signed NDAs before taking up employment with the Riders.
“Now is the perfect time,” she had told me when we were boarding.
A second slug from Hiroshi knocked me back to reality.Errantly, I wished Alex were somewhere in the crowd so I could focus on him. I hated that we were doing this odd communication fasting until tomorrow. I starved to hear his voice. What texts we traded were short and void of anything of substance. What’s more, I detected that something was off, something I couldn’t figure out until he told me. His brother hadn’t come with us during the trip and that only set off more alarm bells. I prayed for his safety.
“They’re gonna start falling asleep soon,” Hiroshi told me in that cool and calculated tone of his. “Now or never, Romo.”
I looked up from the carpeted floor. Emma had been staring. She exuded confidence in her eyes that I envied, someone who lived just on the outskirts of scandal and never had to actually partake.
She nodded. I stood and she popped to her feet.
“All right,” she said at high volume, “everyone, listen up.” A round of grumbling rumbled through the fuselage. “This will only take a sec, okay? Perry, headphones. Garcia, shut it and listen.” She went through four more people until finally the entire team, almost forty sets of eyes, all stared at her.
And then at me.
I stood at the front of the plane. Light turbulence rocked me and I was thankful for the opportunity to grab something to hide my shaking hands.
“Hey guys,” I said.
“Speak up!” someone from the back shouted.
I found Brett near the front. He had been grinning like an idiot. He double raised his eyebrows and then blew me a kiss.
I laughed, shook my head, and felt the tension on my back release. “All right,” I said loudly. “I’m into dudes. Please hold all gay jokes until I’m done talking.” An uneasy round of laughter. I scanned faces, targeting ones I knew might be a problem. No judgment. At least not yet. “I don’t like keeping this a secret butyou need to know. I’m gay. My family already knows. I came out to them years ago.” I cleared my throat. I had practiced a speech but that completely vacated from my head like a tenant with overdue rent. But these were my boys. They knew me and I knew them. “I’m trying to keep this quiet. The media doesn’t know and I don’t want them to know. You guys are like family though and it makes sense to—”
“Dude, no shit,” someone called out from somewhere in the middle. I narrowed my vision and found Rodgers, a shortstop who lived up to his name in height. Everyone looked at him. “Oh, come on guys. We knew.” He then looked at me. “We all knew.” His shoulders went up and down in a quick shrug. “Ain’t no big deal to me. Right guys?”
The majority of people agreed. My eyebrows went up and I took a step back. “Wait… you guys… you already figured it out?”
Someone in the front, Perry, threw up his hands. “Shit, Romo, really? I think I saw a poll the other day that rated you our hottest player. And nobody has ever seen a girl on your arm? That’s not too hard to figure out.”
I blinked. “But… no one ever…”
Rodgers continued. “Dude, it’s called respectin’ privacy. We don’t care. I mean, Brett is clearly in love with you, but that’s between you guys.”
Brett launched to his feet, pretended to grab his heart, and dramatically stumbled up the aisle until he crashed into me. “They know! They know about us!” he shouted as the plane erupted in laughter.
I playfully shoved him off me as he pretended to go in for a big, wet kiss. Hiroshi stood and the plane hushed. “If anybody has a problem, come and talk to me. But wedoneed to continue to respect Romo’s privacy. No talking to the media. If anyone tries to catch you off guard, tell Emma and she can get it sorted out. We thought it was best to tell you now so you have time todigest. I want to emphasize, though, that this changes nothing. He’s still our Romo-cop and one of the best hitters in the league.” Hiroshi grew a sly grin and said, “He just happens to like baseball bats more than we originally thought.”
A fresh round of laughter and playful ribbing undulated through the plane. My face went burgundy red as Hiroshi escorted me back to my seat. Emma finished up with some token “you’re expected to do...” speech that I politely ignored.
I wanted to text Alex. He was the first person on my mind to share in my elation. Instead, I pulled out my phone and found the family thread that only had my parents and siblings. A barrage of responses came within the blink of an eye. I had to click my phone off and turn away, looking out the window and forcing myself to stay centered. Mist sprouted across my eyes as a lump grew in my throat. They were ceaselessly proud of me, in all things, in all ways. My family was like a never-ending fount of pride for their son and brother.
In the aftermath, it all felt…easy. Terribly easy. So much so that I wondered why I never did this to begin with. Yes, there were a few faces in the crowd that seemed perturbed, but Emma and Hiroshi could deal with them afterward. On the whole, though? I felt silly for being so nervous.
Wasn’t that the way of things? You suffer a thousand self-inflicted wounds before you realize nothing was ever wrong.
