Page 89 of Ours
They weren’t all bad. Nic unzipped his bag and undid his lock, stowing that away first. As much as he was ready to quit the game, he’d had a lot of great times over the years. He’d been through a lot with his team, both in the locker room and on the field. He loved some of his teammates like family. He’d miss them. As Nic reminisced and emptied his locker, he heard someone else enter and turned to see Taylor with an empty duffle bag of his own.
“Hey.” Taylor nodded in Nic’s direction and set his own bag down. “Cleaning your shit out too?”
“Yeah.” Nic turned back to his still half-full locker. “Kept pushing it off.”
“Same here.” Taylor began to load his own bag up. “The cleaning up was always the most boring part of playing.”
“Yeah,” Nic agreed as he packed up. “Wish we could make the waterboys or cheerleaders do this for us.”
“I mean, we do both know a boy who’dloveto handle all your sweaty jocks,” Taylor teased.
“Heh, yeah…” Nic actually felt bad for having to break the news to Taylor. “I kinda ended that whole thing with Cory and Derek a while back.”
“Aww, really?” Taylor sounded slightly disappointed and paused his packing. “I wondered why I didn’t really see you all together much anymore. That’s too bad.”
“Yeah… I dunno, man. It just wasn’t really working out. Wasn’treallymy thing.” Nic stopped his own packing as he continued. “Plus, after the bullshit that went down last semester, I just wanna put all that shit behind me.”
“Yeah, that sucked.” Taylor went back to packing his bag. “But you shouldn’t let some assholes decide how you’re gonna live your life. Fuck ’em.”
“No one is telling me how to run my life. I just got tired of dealing with a lot of the headaches and problems that were starting to come up when I was hanging out with those two.” Nic continued to pack as well. “Besides, it’s not like straight guys like you or me have to try hard if we wanna get laid.”
“Who said I was straight?” Taylor asked, still facing his locker, a hint of cockiness in his voice.
“Oh. Uh. I didn’t…” Nic stumbled. “I didn’t know you were gay, man.”
“Didn’t say I was gay either.”
“So… you’re bi?”
“I’m not really worried about labels.” Taylor explained. “Look, I love girls.Lovethem. But some of the hottest sex I’ve ever had—at least so far—has been with guys. It would be stupid to cut that out of my life just because of what someone else might think. Plus, there’s the whole ‘gender is a construct’ thing. At the end of the day, what really makes a guy a guy and a girl a girl?”
Nic stood there and watched as Taylor packed, jaw slightly slack. Nic had been dealing with his own inner turmoil forweeks, and Taylor just came in with everything already figured out.
“You okay, man?” Taylor cocked his head when he noticed Nic staring at him.
“Yeah, sorry.” Nic shook off his distracted look. “Just never knew you to be such a liberated guy.”
“I read a lot.” Taylor grabbed the last few things from his locker—a jersey and some socks—and tossed them in his bag, zipping it up. “We can’t all fit the dumb jock stereotype.” Taylor winked at Nic.
“Ha, ha.” Nic rolled his eyes, finished packing his own bag, and zipped up. “You got all this shit figured out, huh?”
“I didn’t always. But like I said, I couldn’t pretend like the stuff I had done with guys hadn’t happened. I wouldn’t want to.” Taylor threw his bag over his shoulder. “So the only other option was to figure out how to be okay with it.”
“That’s…” Nic wasn’t expecting the thoughtful answer and picked up his own bag, “great, man. I wish my problems were as simple to work through.”
“Dude. Seriously?” Taylor cocked his head and sighed at Nic, who was at this point being willfully obtuse. “You don’t see any similarities between—”
“Hope I’m not interrupting date night.”
Nic’s head whipped around at the voice of a third person entering the locker room. Steve.
“Fuck off, man.” Taylor beat Nic to the punch.
“No, thanks. That’s more his thing.” Steve walked to his own locker, here to do the same thing as everyone else. Nic should have just done this last week. Or tomorrow. Really, any time but now.
“I seriously hope someone knocks your teeth out in college.” Nic could dream, right?
“Why? Your little boyfriend not sucking your dick good enough anymore?” Steve turned around to taunt. “Sure seemed like he was doing a pretty good job in the garage at our victory party.”
