The Locker Room (28 page)

Oh yeah. Fuck. Last night"s game had been against Boston.

“Thanks for calling,” Xander whispered, his voice cracking, even

though he was totally sincere.

“I wouldn"t miss it,” Chris murmured. “Can she hear?”

“Ask me if I give a fuck.”

“Okay, then. I"ll say it.”

“Please?” Xan hated begging, but God, he needed to hear it, which

was weird, because they hadn"t needed to say it much before.

“I love you, Xan.”

“I love you too, Chris.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

And then the computer screen went dark.

The Locker Room 157

There was a waiting silence on the other side of the door. Then:

“Xander, can I come in?”

Xander sighed. Four o"clock in the fucking morning. There were

two things that should be happening in his bedroom at this hour, and the

following conversation was
not
one of them!

“Yeah.”

Mandy looked around the vast bedroom curiously, from the dogs

asleep on the floor with their pile of toys (which reassured her) to the

prints on the wall (Chris tended to go for ink and watercolor, and Xander

liked them. They looked real.) His suit was draped loosely on one of the

two stuffed chairs in the corner and there were various things on the

dresser: cuff links, ear studs (Chris"s ear was pierced, and he liked flashy

studs in it) combs, hair gel, even a new bottle of man-steurizer, that

Xander couldn"t bring himself to use because it didn"t smell the same

when it wasn"t on Chris"s skin. It was all littered in a vague sort of order,

the sort of thing you could clean up quickly when you were in the mood,

but why bother when you were just living your life, right?

“This room is homey,” she said quietly. “The weight room looks

used and shit, and the big TV room on this side of the house… they look

happy. But none of the other rooms look… you know. Lived in.” She

was wearing a franchise shirt, size XXLT, and it came to her knees and

slid off her shoulders. She looked helpless and gamine—but not

desirable. Not to him.

Xander nodded. “Yeah.”

“Xander, if I ask you a question, do you promise not to kick me out

of this really nice fucking house?”

Xander sighed. “If I answer you do I have to make you sign a

confidentiality agreement to not blab the frickin" answer all over the

whole entire world?”

Mandy"s eyes got big, and then she nodded and pursed her lips.

“You"re really worried I"d do that? You like… totally saved my life

tonight?”

“Mandy, this is our lives we"re talking about. Everything we love

to do in the world depends on only a handful of people knowing.” That

158 Amy Lane

sounded so dire, didn"t it? The weight of not telling the world seemed to

press in on him like that damned box.

“Okay,” she said softly, and she came to sit on the bed. “So now

let"s say I know too. You going to tell me what the bad dream was

about?”

Xander shook his head and laid his cheek on his knees. “You heard

that?” he asked, embarrassed. He wondered if Penny had heard it too.

“You were screaming, Xander.”

“I don"t usually get that loud when—”

“When Chris is with you?” she asked delicately, and he nodded,

still clutching himself into a little ball.

“Can I rub your back, Xander? "Kay? Because, you know, you

gave me a hug and comforted me, and I have to admit, I got all starry-

eyed for a minute, and thought „Oh hell, yeah—he"s way better than

whatsisface with the lump on his skull", but you know? You were just

hugging me to be a good guy. It almost means more now. I"d like to

return the favor.”

Xander swallowed and nodded, and that tiny hand came up and

started to rub a circle between his shoulder blades. Mandy was maybe

five foot eight, but to Xander, she seemed doll-sized. A tremble racked

through him, and he relaxed a little more, and then Penny"s voice said

dryly, “Is this a slumber party? Can I join in too?”

“Oh relax,” Mandy said, keeping good nature in the face of

Penny"s sarcasm. “I"m not going to steal your brother"s man, okay? He

just had a bad dream, that"s all.”

“Oh, Jesus, Xander. I"m sorry. I forgot.”

Xander looked up at the two very different women and tried

pathetically for a little bit of dignity. “I can take care of myself, thank

you. I"ll be fine.” Reluctantly he shook off that comforting hand on his

back. “Really. Ladies, can we just, you know, all go back to our original

beds, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Penny walked further into the room and kissed

Xander on the back of the head. “You enjoy your macho posturing,

Xander. I promised Chris I"d take care of you while I was here, and I

will.”

The Locker Room 159

“Thanks,” he muttered into the cave of his knees. He said it

gratefully, though, and Penny tousled his hair as she got up to leave.

Mandy patted his back one last time and did the same thing, and then the

door was closed and he was left alone in the lamplight. Hesitantly,

testing the waters, he turned off the lamp, and was relieved when the

darkness was merely soothing, and not pressing along his flesh like dead

vampire slugs from hell.

Apparently he"d been properly comforted, and the thought made

him drowsy enough to allow him to curl up into his absurdly large fetal

ball and go back to sleep.

MANDY stayed. The next day, Xander had a public appearance, and he

got back to find that Penny had taken her to her friends" apartment (“a

class A dump with a shitty couch”) and had moved her into her room.

She"d even put posters up. (Pop stars and dancers—no one Xander

recognized, but then, not his thing, really.) Xander was a little bemused,

but, as he said privately to Penny, he"d always felt sort of guilty for that

side of the house just sucking up space. Penny had laughed a little and

patted his cheek.

“The sweetest thing about the fact that you and my brother never

had to grow up? It"s that you still have hearts like children.”

Xander didn"t have the “child"s heart” to point out that maybe it

was because he"d never had a chance to be a child when he was one, but

then he saw her brown eyes grow dark, and thought maybe that had

occurred to her without his help.

And within a week, while Xander was still on the team"s latest road

trip, they had Audrey to make Xander"s harem complete.

“Another one?” Chris asked during their morning phone call, and

Xander looked around the hotel room disconsolately. They"d played in

Arizona that night, and were set to take the early morning flight out.

“Well, I gave her my e-mail address, and she e-mailed me to tell

me she"d have to cancel service. And then I said, „Wait—how are you

going to go to do your school work?" and she said she was more worried

about keeping her apartment, and, well, I called home, and the next thing

160 Amy Lane

you know, Mandy and Penny were going to help her move yesterday

morning.”

“„The next thing you know"?” Chris shook his head. “Xander, if

you wanted to collect stray girls, all you had to do was say so. I feel like

I"ve been depriving you of something these last five years.”

Xander grunted. “If I wanted to collect stray girls, I would have let

you know. They just sensed a vacuum and swarmed.”

That brought a laugh, and Chris smiled. Xander liked the crinkles

at the corners of his eyes, and he especially liked the way they were

getting deeper and more thoughtful. Oh, God. His whole body tingled

with the need to be touched.

“Well, I"ll remember that the next time I visit. Maybe they"ll leave

the house in one big drove!”

“If it"s you and me and the bed? I don"t think I"ll notice!” Xander

told him truthfully, and Chris rolled his eyes. He called every morning,

in time to wake Xander up from his dreams, and Xander was grateful.

But comforting a frightened man from far away was far different from

touching one close up. Some of those early-morning comforts had turned

into making love, and… geez. Even just passing each other in the

hallway, or a touch on the arm as one of them was standing at the

counter. He wasn"t just missing his friend, or his lover, he was missing

his
other half,
and as much as he tried to tell himself to man up and get

over it, he didn"t feel like much of a man without Chris.

Chris"s smile faded, and his eyes became intent. “How"s the foot? I

watched you play last night, and you were going balls out, but the minute

the buzzer rang....”

Xander grimaced. “Yeah, well, it didn"t seem to hurt until then.”

He"d gone down like a ton of bricks. The doc had rushed out with a

crutch, and Xander had used it for the rest of the night. And the next

night too. He could practice fine, but once he was off the court, um,

ouch. Just fucking ouch.

But while he"d been on the court….

Oh, he"d forgotten how the world looked perfect, clear and simple

there. Even the crowd disappeared when it was his heartbeat and the

The Locker Room 161

basketball and the clearest, simplest way to get that thing where it

needed to go.

“Yeah,” Chris sighed, lost in his own thoughts for a moment.

“Nothing seems to hurt on court, does it?”

And like that, their morning conversation was broken, and they

were left with the raw fact that they wanted each other, and after twelve

years of seeing each other daily, they had not touched in over two weeks.

“I can cancel my charity stuff next week…,” Xander started

reluctantly—his chosen charity was the local foster homes, and he hated

to disappoint the kids.

“And risk losing your contract? I don"t think so. Besides….” Chris

looked at him, an unmistakable tenderness in his eyes, even from the

computer screen. “Xander, you… you need to do that. I can tell. It feeds

something inside you.”

“So do you,” Xander muttered, and Chris made a strangled sound.

“Look… we"ve got a week until the All-Star break, okay? I"ll book

us adjoining rooms. You fly in, we do that banquet thing at the

beginning, and… and every second we"re not out, doing the games and

shit, we"ll be together. I swear, okay?”

Xander nodded and scrubbed his face. His nightmare that morning

had been a doozy, and the pain in his foot had wormed its way into it,

making him sure that vampire zombies were eating his toe. Sure, it

sounded hilarious when the light was on and he was talking to Chris, but

when he was suffocated by the weight of sleep and his own fears? There

was nothing funny about it.

“I can function without you,” Xander said by way of reassurance.

“I can. I… I just don"t…. Chris, you know how I used to think the lake

was pretty in the winter? I liked all that bleakness, and the stark branches

of the trees and the pewter gray color of the water… remember that?”

Chris nodded. “Yeah.” Xander wasn"t trying to write poetry—but

that view from their window when they woke up, from their front room

in the evening—Xander had stared out that window for hours.

“Nothing"s pretty. I don"t notice the smell of the air, and I don"t

care what I eat for breakfast. It"s like… like—” Oh God. He was really

going to say this. He had to say this. “It"s like the world is dead without

162 Amy Lane

you, Chris. I… the only time I even see in color is when I"m on the

court. I… just, if you ever wonder which one"s more important to me,

the game or you, don"t, okay? This is temporary. If this was permanent,

if there wasn"t a way out, I"d cash in everything we had, take the dogs,

and go teach history in some obscure school in bumfuck Egypt, okay?”

Chris grimaced, and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“God. You think you know a guy, right? Xander… Xander, I swear…

the next reporter who calls you Cave Man is going to have me ripping

his tonsils out through his asshole. That is the most goddamned beautiful

thing I think I"ve ever heard. I love you too. And don"t ever doubt it. I"ll

see you at the All-Stars, right?”

“Right.”

“But now… baby, I heard your alarm there—you"ve got to go.”

And he did. It was time to sign off and go.

HE THOUGHT that Audrey was the only person home when he got

through the door after his road trip. She was curled up on the couch in

the living room with a schoolbook, and he was glad—it meant she hadn"t