Rounding Third (12 page)

    
“He is so sweet,” Meg sighed.

         
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Rob found himself doing his usual routine at 3 a.m. and for once, it worked. He
had calmed down enough to think rationally. If Josh had come to see him, he
couldn’t for a moment suspect why Rob had been acting so crazy. Rob resolved to
act as normal as possible and pretend nothing had happened. If there was one
thing Rob was good at, it was pretending to act normal when he knew so well
that he was anything but.

15
    
      

When Rob felt Josh’s hand on his shoulder on
the way out to practice, Rob turned and looked at the cockeyed grin on Josh’s
face and knew he’d never felt so close to another human being in his life. He
wanted to reach out and hug Josh and tell him how much he valued his
friendship. Just his friendship, nothing more.

Josh asked Rob to play pepper and as usual
their game got out of hand with Josh running like crazy as Rob sprayed balls
all over the place and taunted him. Having missed the last of the balls, Josh
dove at Rob’s legs and tackled him. Rob squirmed to get loose.

Rob rolled over and found himself looking up
at Coach Hudson. “Wardell, if you hurt him, I will kill you. You are
expendable. He is not. Three laps for each of you. Stop the horseplay.”

As they started their laps, Rob asked,
“Didn’t you see Hudson? You must like running laps.”

“I like running them with you,” Josh
answered. Rob looked at Josh for some indication of what he meant.

They entered the locker room, laughing at
another of Rob’s Coach Hudson imitations. At his locker, Josh quickly stripped
down to his jock. Rob took a few deep breaths in hopes of quelling the erection
that had begun to grow in his jock the moment he saw Josh’s sweaty chest. His
furtive glances at Josh’s cheeks pinched together by his jockstrap didn’t help.
When Josh turned around Rob could not fail to notice that Josh was also bulging
in his jock. Josh grabbed his towel and walked toward Rob. 

“Try not to damage any lockers tonight, will you,”
he said, closing on his friend with his goofy smile and dazzling green
eyes. 

“Try not to push me into any,” Rob replied.
He hoped Josh didn’t hear the quavering in his voice. Rob held his ground in
front of his locker until Josh was within a foot. Rob was sure Josh could see
his heart pounding against his small chest. The proximity to his almost-naked
friend increased Rob’s perspiration more than the three laps had.

Josh hesitated for a long moment. “Rob, when I
was over at your house the other night and saw the photos...”

Every one of Rob’s muscles went rigid. His
breath ceased. His heart made up for the lack of movement elsewhere in his
body. He wondered if it was possible to have a heart attack at his age, and at
the same time hoped he would have one to spare him whatever came next. Josh had
to be able to hear the drumming against his rib cage. Rob tried to answer, but
all the liquid had evaporated from his mouth. 

Josh was speaking slowly as though he, too, was
unsure what came next. He looked at Rob’s wide fear-filled doe-eyes then looked
away. He took a breath, steeled himself, and before Rob could form any sort of
response went on, “I noticed you only printed out the pictures of me with my
shirt off.”

Rob studied Josh’s face for some indication
of what was to come next. Part of him feared Josh would hit him, but there was
nothing the least bit threatening about Josh’s nervous smile or his warm,
unsteady voice. Another part of Rob feared that if Josh wasn’t about to punch
him that whatever came next would be far worse. Again Rob tried to speak and
again his mouth failed to make words.

“I’ve noticed you checking me out and I
wasn’t sure if it was just wishful thinking or if you really were,” Josh said.
It was a statement, but also a question, giving Rob a chance to refute
it. 

Rob tensed even tighter, clenching his jaw
and feeling a stabbing pain through his chest. He’d never had a flaming arrow
penetrate his body, but he imagined this was what it would feel like. 

Josh swallowed, and spoke again. “I notice
you get hard when we wrestle and sometimes when we shower here, but I wasn’t
sure what that meant until I saw all those pictures.”

Rob tried to make his legs move in retreat.
He tried to make his mouth form sounds. Again he heard the sick, wounded rabbit
squeak out of his throat, but that was all. He feared that someone might walk
in any moment. He also prayed that someone would and save him. Every warning
bell was clanging like the sound effects in a movie about a sinking
submarine. 

“I know I get hard when I look at you,” Josh
said almost as though he were asking permission to. 

He gave Rob a long time to object as he
slowly reached out to touch Rob’s stomach. Josh’s hand was shaking and Rob
could tell it was taking an effort for him to raise his hand across the
twelve-inch wide chasm that separated their charged bodies. Rob’s stomach
muscles tightened even more. The tentative touch of his friend’s fingertips
felt like electric ice. “I’ve wanted to touch you since the first day I saw you
in the hall, my first day at this school. And I wanted to even more after I saw
you in the locker room the first day of baseball practice.” Josh’s voice was
soft and gentle, wavering between the poles of fear and desire. 

The words seem to come from very far away,
and Rob was stunned to hear they were the same ones he would’ve been saying if
he possessed the strength to speak.

“And the more I got to know you, the more I
liked you, and the more I hoped you liked me. Those pictures were what gave me
the guts to tell you. I couldn’t believe you might like me, too.” The quivering
in Josh’s voice made it sound like he might cry. Rob wanted to reach out and
comfort his friend, to tell him it was okay. But he couldn’t move, and he wasn’t
at all sure that it was okay. 

“I’ve been so scared for so long to tell
you.” Josh ever so slowly caressed up the ripples of Rob’s stomach to his
small, firm chest. He let his fingers hover on the tiny, but very erect nipple.
The bulge forced Rob’s shorts out and he knew if Josh kept this up, he wouldn’t
be able to control himself. He forced himself to look down to break the spell
Josh had on him, but his eyes fell upon a sight even more entrancing--Josh was
poking out the top of his jock and was soaking his waistband. 

“Do you want to touch it?” Josh asked, noting
the target of Rob’s eyes and almost pleading with Rob to do so. His voice was
soft, inviting, hypnotizing. 

Rob still couldn’t move. He had longed for
this moment. He had long feared this moment. But he never, even in his wildest
2 a.m. fantasy, thought that it would really come to pass. With a touch as
gentle as a breeze Josh took Rob’s hand and brought it toward his jock. Rob was
too weak to resist. 

Once Josh had placed the hand there, Rob
instinctively took hold. He had never touched another guy and Josh was so much
bigger than him. He could feel the power rushing through it. He felt
electricity surging to parts of his body where he hadn’t known he had nerve
endings. Involuntarily he grasped more firmly. Josh recoiled and shot a hot
stream that splattered over his stomach, coating the light trail of hair that
ran from his navel on down. The white stream continued to spew over Josh with
several warm drops hitting Rob and causing his flesh to burn as though splashed
with acid. 

The searing of the liquid shocked Rob enough
that his mouth became unstuck. “I’m sorry,” is what came out.

“No, I’m sorry. I just got too excited. I’ve
wanted you to touch me and to touch you for so long...”

Rob looked into his friend’s eyes and saw
tears there.

“God, I have wanted you for so long...” 
Josh reached to pull Rob toward him in an embrace.

“No,” Rob said as he threw his hands up as a
barrier. His hands brushed Josh’s perfect chest and a spark shot through him.
He longed to touch that muscle, but now that he had, it terrified him and he
yanked his hands away. The
no
was not loud or forceful, but it was firm
enough, and Josh heeded it.

“What’s wrong?” Josh seemed hurt and
surprised.

“We can’t do this.”

“Here?”

“Anywhere. We can’t.”

“Why?” Josh asked.

“I...I...I...I’ve got to go.”

“I want you.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can. Say when and where.”

“We can’t.” Rob’s words were weak, and if
either of them had really been listening, they would have wondered which of
them he was trying to convince.

“Please,” Josh said so plaintively that it
caused tears to instantly flood Rob’s eyes.

Rob had never denied his friend anything, but
this time he said, “Don’t.” It wasn’t so much an order as a pitiful plea.
“Let’s just go. Please.”

Josh nodded. “I’m sorry.”

Josh took half a step back. Rob didn’t want
to look down at himself still rigid or Josh, spent and dripping out the top of
his jock. 

“Please, could we just go?”

Josh nodded feebly. “I’m sorry, Rob.”

Rob opened his locker and started cramming
things into his backpack with no thought to his books, papers, or
clothes. 

Josh grabbed his towel and walked back to his
locker wiping off the mess he had made all over himself. Released somewhat from
his fear of Josh, Rob began to fear the arrival of someone else and hurried to
flee the scene of the crime. They put their sweaty clothes back on, fast. Rob’s
shirt was on inside out, but he didn’t bother to reverse it.

Josh drove with exaggerated concentration so
he wouldn’t have to look at Rob. Rob stared out the side window although he
sensed Josh stealing glances when he would check cross-traffic at
intersections.

Rob had gone from never having felt so close
to someone to now never having felt so completely alone. Rob was sure he had
just lost his best friend. His only true friend. The truth of what his
grandmother used to say struck him:
Be careful what you wish for, you may
get it.

He had wished, hoped and prayed his whole
life for someone as wonderful as Josh to touch him, and now that he had, Rob
wanted to go home, get the key to his father’s gun cabinet, take out the
twelve-gauge, and put it in his mouth. It would have to hurt less than this.

Josh pulled into the driveway, and Rob opened
the car door and started out. The sound of a voice startled him. “Rob.” Rob
swallowed and looked at his friend for the first time since they had left the
locker room, but couldn’t bear to see Josh’s moist eyes and looked away again.
“I’m sorry. Can we talk about this?” Josh asked.

Rob hesitated. Then he turned back so he was
facing the open car door, but not Josh. “No. I don’t want to talk about it. Not
now. Not ever.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to speak to
me?” Josh’s voice caught in his throat as he said it.

There was a long pause as Rob contemplated
the car door. “It means...it...it means...I don’t know what it means.
Goddammit.” Rob slammed the car door and walked toward the house. He tried to
compose himself, realized that was useless and bolted in the door, past his
startled family, into the hall and up the stairs. He locked the bathroom door
and cranked the shower full blast to cover the sound of his sobbing. 

                                               
16

Rob could not bring himself to get in the
shower. He stared down at the dried white spots on his stomach. He gently
touched one with the tip of his finger. A jolt went through him.

    
He wanted to stop thinking about Josh, but here he was unable to wash this most
intimate part of Josh off his body. He had hardly stopped thinking about Joshua
Lawrence Schlagel since the first time he had seen him at school last
September.

Josh had been walking down the hall when Rob
first saw him. Rob could close his eyes and immediately bring up the image of
Josh that day. Levis. A Green Bay hat, on backwards. A hank of hair that looked
soft and silky, even at a distance, poked out from the opening where the
adjustable band was in the back of the hat, making the hair flop onto his
forehead. There was a perfectly straight line of hair across the back of his
tanned neck.

His biceps showed definition even under the
white Milwaukee Brewers T-shirt. The front of the shirt, where the logo was,
poked out indicating there was a nice chest underneath. Rob’s eyes didn’t stray
to check out the jeans--checking out another guy’s equipment would make him
gay.

The thing that really caught Rob’s attention,
though, was not Josh’s body--as perfect as it appeared to be--it was his smile.
Even though Josh was alone, and seemed to have nothing to smile about, he had a
slightly crooked grin on his smooth face, creating a dimple only on the left
side. Josh’s nose was a just little too big and pointed, but rather than
detracting from the picture, gave the almost-too-perfect face a dash of realism
that made it that much more handsome.