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Ch. 3: High and Tight
Back in our room later that night, he grabs my shoulder gently as I move for the TV remote.
"What do we do with you?" It hits me somewhat ambiguously, and I find myself caring a little too much about what he's thinking. So I defend.
"What about you?" I turn, fold my arms.
"I think it's universally accepted I'm pretty irredeemable." He smiles. "But you. You're on your way, bud. I want to help keep you on that path." He searches my unblinking eyes.
"And I thank you for that." I want to dismiss this and know I shouldn't give a shit. I look for the remote.
"I just don't want to put ideas in your head. You know me."
I mean, I think I know him, but I don't know where this conversation is going or why. "We're chill, bro." Which sounds so stupid. We bump fists and I snag the remote to find Sports Center. I should go for a walk.
Dex gets ready for bed while I stare at game clips and the scrawl of scores and stats, ignoring his movement around the room. All things considered, this probably seems normal for me. At least he doesn't change his routine; I might punch him if he sleeps in a shirt now. Resigned, I mute the show and ask if the glow will bother him. "Not at all. I'm pretty wiped." He is asleep in five minutes.
I wait a half hour till I look over at him. It might have been longer before I finally turn away.
**** Coach calls me over in the bottom of the second. Our guy, Wabs, is struggling with his control. "We'll need the crew for an inning or two each to get this under control. Start warming up." There isn't a lot of pressure, so I figure I'll just see how I hold up.
We keep the side going with a run in the top of the third, and Mason covers next but says he only has one in him. It gave me a good fifteen-twenty minutes to get loose. Dex has an at-bat to start off the fourth, so I steal a few minutes to watch him.
Something odd happens. Dex has this routine, stepping out of the box and taking his swings with his back to the plate. Their catcher stands each time and--seriously--stares directly at his ass. I swear he just adjusted his cup.
When Dex dinks a grounder, their catcher follows the play down the baseline. Called out, Dex heads back across the field to the visitors' bench. The catcher says something. Dex hesitates for a second, turns and flashes daggers at him.
I have to know, so I leave the pen before Katz steps into the box and jog over to the dugout. Dex is putting on his pads holding a conversation with himself.
"Hey. What did he say to you?"
He looks up at me, a flash of anger. "Never mind. I got this."
"Something's got you, bud." He doesn't respond. "You know I got your back."
He pauses as he snaps his right shin guard. He shakes his head then shoots a look dead in my eye. "He said," and dropping his volume, "`I'd tap that any day.'"
I should make a joke, lower the heat of it. But I can't. My face burns. A slight tremble: "Fuck that shit." My voice seethes.
"Stinger! Dex! Get your asses out there!" Dex finishes his prep; I have work to do.
I sweep through the first two batters--fast balls and curve balls hard. The sun is white heat. I am making the calls, and Dex just goes with it. I'm not wasting anybody's time. And there you are, batter three. Number thirteen. Well, it's his unlucky day. Ass-zit steps into the box and gives Dex a look. He licks his lips. Dex ignores him, trying to get my attention.
I throw the first low and away, drawing him closer to the plate. A curve ball away. He checks his swing and chuckles at the next one, a third called ball, outside again. I'm way behind in the count, and I don't care.
I watch him step out, look down at Dex and adjust his cup again. Subtle to everyone but me. My ears burn. A pulse in my neck. I cock my knee and let it fly, high and inside. And more inside, a dart straight at his head. He twists away and lets out a little yelp, the torque of his rotation pulling him to the ground. The ball thwacks the back stop.
Vindication is a powerful feeling. But then Dex gives the fuck-wad a hand to help him up. And Coach is on me in, like, five seconds. "What the FUCK, Stinger?! You don't pull that shit on my team."
I didn't think it was such a terrible move, but seeing Coach angry gets to me. I want to salvage it somehow, even though he is still barking. "I missed him."
Coach puts his hand on my chest. "You know and I know. You're lucky they don't know." He nods to the other dugout. I glance over at the target of my anger standing now at first base. His smirk. My wrist goes twitchy. I look to the plate to find you-know-who half-way to the mound: mask off, eyebrows raised.
Coach follows my eyes and puts his face close to me. I can't ignore him. "You can make a decision in five seconds you'll regret for a life."
Dex reaches us just then. "Everything OK?" Get the fuck away, I'm thinking. To someone.
"He's done for the day. He did what we needed." Coach takes the ball from him and motions to the pen.
"Sorry, Coach." I ignore Dex as I step from the mound.
**** We manage to win the game, but I'm pissed for a week. The guys start wondering what's up. I avoid their house, and Mills even asks if I'm "hiding a girl."
It's a week till the conference series--we're on top of the division--and I'm walking home from a group study session. I've been ignoring texts and the occasional call, and my focus is where it needs to be. So I've convinced myself. Then I turn onto my street and see Dex on the front steps staring at his phone. For a split second, I forget I'm still angry, which just makes me mad at myself.
He looks a little nervous when he realizes it's me but recovers in his easy way. "Hey, bud! You're hard to keep up with!" I plot my path around him, slowing enough not to seem overtly rude.
"Hi, Dex. Mills isn't home."
"I know."
"I've got a lot of work to do for my Lit class." I brush by up to the porch and open the screen door.
He stands. "Wait a sec. Scott. Scott!" Sharp, with a little panic in his voice. I turn back to him, letting the door close. Jaw set. Staring down at him. "What the fuck? Are you seriously mad at me?" I see his confusion. And annoyance.
When I was five or six, a neighbor broke my favorite Transformer, a toy I got for Christmas. I cried over it, was nearly inconsolable. He called me a wuss, never apologizing. My mother said, "Accidents happen." I was stunned and felt hollow: here's something important to me that no one cares about. I always expected more from people. Still do. I never allowed myself to accept that life lesson.
"Wait a sec. That?" My eyelids close longer than a blink, betraying me. "You're pissed because why? I don't understand what's the big deal." I fixate on his baggy green shorts and Adidas flops. Black calf-high athletic socks. A ripped orange tee. Goofy. But I also remember the shower and the hotel room. Recall every night since when I lay awake fucking my fist in frustration. Big deal? Was I so naive? I was there, and I know how he'd responded, the way his body yielded to mine and the literal explosion resulting from the deed. I'm not making it up. So I settle on the truth, which feels like cutting open an artery.
"It was my first time." The look on his face: part surprise, part pity. I scoff my own annoyance and turn back to the door.
"Wait." He is nearly on top of me, and I hold still to give him a chance. "Just wait a sec." Moments click like a photograph. He sighs as he drops his forehead on my shoulder. Is he patronizing me? "Scotty, man. I didn't know."
"Would it have mattered?" Annoyed as I am but liking the weight of him.
"No, but maybe we would've--I would have been more careful."
I wonder how so, but I make my decision anyway. "Come inside before anyone sees us." I dig out my keys and let us in, his silence acquiescent.
The blinds are down but not closed, and what's left of afternoon slices through the living room. I climb straight up the stairs, leaving him no choice but to follow.
My room is big enough for a couch, my desk and two dressers along with a queen-size bed. Which is unmade, but it's a fairly clean room all the same. There are dirty clothes in a basket by the closet, my Phillies jock lying on top like the Underoos of my childhood. I resist the urge to bury it.
Dex closes the door behind him. I open a window and sit down at my desk, weighing my options as if the bases are loaded. What will I give him? He stands near the dresser.
"Scot--"
"No." Not a scold. "I'll tell you." He nods. I am silent for a minute and look around my room. A poster of Cole Hammels next to the closet. Dad's jersey's in a Container Store bin under my bed. Twice I try to start, Dex's patience my grace. "I never told you about high school. I mean, school not sports. My classmates."
I stand and walk to the closet, where I pull out a banker's box and remove the top. My eleventh-grade yearbook is somewhere near the bottom. I'm not sure what I'm trying to memorialize.
Baseball made me popular back in those early years in Philly, but things changed when my teammates started dating. I couldn't understand their interest in girls over baseball, and I was kinda a dick about it. Not nice to the girls, making derogatory remarks to the guys. Maybe I wanted their attention. I went on one date with Cheryl Massatoni; she tried to kiss me, and I hugged her instead. I never asked her out again.
I don't say this to Dex. Instead, I hand him my yearbook and let him browse. "Read what they wrote." He bends over the book on top of the dresser, scanning the scrawl of comments in the inside cover. "Out loud, please." I brace myself.
He glances over at me. Without reading from the pages, he delivers their lines: "Scott, you're gonna kick ass one day. Good luck! Dude, I will keep your autograph for when you're famous. Have fun this summer. Hope to see you sometime. Thanks for being my lab partner. I wish we hung out more." He pauses. "Typical high school shit. What's wrong with it?"
"It's all surface."
"High school is surface, Scott."
His smile pities me and agitates a bit, so I spell it out for him: "I was also signing their books. I saw what they wrote to each other. They were living a life and making plans and doing all the normal things that we're supposed to do."
His face is something like a question mark, or maybe certainty disguised as disbelief. And then, "You're not going to have a normal life, buddy. You have something people would kill to have."
"My friendships weren't real, Andy." He flinches. At the use of his name, I suspect, not what I said, so I take a deep breath. "Not because of baseball. I didn't have real friends..." Now or never, I convince myself. "...because deep down I wanted something I knew I couldn't ask for. Baseball gave me an excuse."
"So you're saying...?"
"Yeah, no. Maybe not then. But when we moved before senior year I got to start over where no one knew me outside of baseball." What do I see when I look into those eyes? What's to interpret there? I know what I'm saying and want to believe we're reading the same book. God, I hope so, because I just keep going. "I felt like I wouldn't have to choose between two things. I was delusional, I know, but I never wanted that choice made for me." Am I even making sense? "Does any of this make sense?" I search for some recognition in his face but feel like that wuss with the broken toy. There's maybe something resembling compassion. What's gotten into me?
I wait for him.
And then: "I think I knew this." He searches for some solution off to the side and grinds his teeth a little, accentuating his chin and jaw. He is fucking gorgeous, and I want to say so. "Maybe I was misreading it?" Blue eyes dart and pierce right through me; I want his eyes on me. "Maybe it's just how people are in the Northeast?" He smiles with his question. I would give my left nut to earn that smile every day.
Finally: "Maybe I didn't want the responsibility?" He feels me bristle a little. "It's not like that. Come on." Palm up to stop me, he rubs the other calloused hand on his face. "Like, when you're doing your thing you are so intense. You kinda scare me with your focus. Your eyes are all `don't fuck with me,' and I don't know if I will ever know what's inside this person." He gestures toward me with a hand I want to take. But I have to keep going. We have never spoken like this, and I might as well let it rip.
"What about you, Andy?" Flip the script and draw an awkward smile. "Maybe I'm intense. Did you doubt this is me?" I don't worry what comes next. I can't worry.
His fingers tap-gallop twice on the dresser as he considers me. He will make his decision, too.
He closes the yearbook and slides it across the dresser. What's past. Four or five steps to my desk, then his hands collect my face as he bends over me, chin on my head. "Let's do this the right way, Scott." A step back; I feel a flutter. He kicks off his flops and peels off his socks. He watches me as he tugs his shirt up over his head, one massive arm getting caught in the sleeve. "You, too." He glances up and down, dancing pools of blue. He blinks, and I am naked. We move as one, but I let him lead the way.
I consider him there on my bed on his back as I let gravity or magnetism draw me into him. Crawling up from his feet, I caress his body, avoiding that massive middle muscle. Up to his pecs, kneading flesh more pliant than baseball leather and deliriously seamless. There's a lot of it. I lean my mouth onto his nipple. Lips and tongue first, then literal tooth and nail. Skin the taste of saltwater taffy. The taut ham-hock of muscle and stiff pink nip are warm and wet with my slobber. I chew. He swipes his hands up my back and says, "Harder." His hands press my face deeper into him as if to say: let me carry this for you. His upper arm squeezes.
I lift off his chest and grab his wrist. Straddling one leg, my thigh bumps his balls and fat cock and I glance down. My dark hair and his light pubes and smooth hanging sack. Quite a sight, and I feel a rush of excitement, a certain confirmation that we are, indeed, two men. I lift his arm high above his head and follow my nose to his pit, the curly blonde swirls damp from exertion. I inhale. Cocks twitch. And I face-plant where his lats meet his serratus and pecs and biceps.
Dex is back. He moans and squeezes, pulling me by the back of my head with his other hand. I look up, and he takes advantage, cradling my jaw in his hands. The expression on his face wears deeper than lust. I inhale again; the simple movement brushes my belly against his hip. I lick my upper lip reflexively as he leans up into me, closing his eyes as he cranes to make room for our noses.
It's happening. I dare not move--can't move or else it might go away forever this time. He pulls back and opens his eyes for approval. I answer the question I read sitting there, bridging the short distance with a hungry growl and covering his mouth with my own. In every way it's my real first time. We fold into each other, tongues invading urgently yet measured. My senses tunnel; everything fixes on that hunger that joins us.
Do you know the sound of two men kissing? Lip smacking and teeth, scruff against skin. Thrilling. The surprise in this is Dex. What I assumed was my own self-protection had been a response to his resistance. When he lets himself loose it sets me free. His strength equals--no--surpasses mine in the ways that matter; he holds me where he wants me. The kiss opens up into more, and more, and I feel myself wrapped tightly between his legs.
He muffles a sound like a question and pulls my face off his. I open my eyes a bit dazed. "You need to fuck me right now." I wrap my head around this. "But I can't take it raw." He makes a grimace; I wince empathy as my dick gets harder. He looks around my room.
"Wait a sec." I hate to break contact for fear I might fall, but I've already fallen. I find some sunscreen that's face moisturizer, too. "I hope this will do?" My erection bounces a bit.
"Yes. And Jesus with that thing!" He laughs, but I spy lust in his eyes and a target on my cock. He leans back and spreads his legs as I crawl in for more. He takes the tube from my hand while I balance on my elbows; a squirt on his fingertips and he reaches to his hole. I chub a little more just watching him. Another squirt in his hand and he grabs my dick, slathering it on and pulling up just once. It feels amazing.
He lifts his legs higher and guides me in, hiking his feet on my ass. It's different from the first time. My dribbling cock nestles against his slot, a warmth drawing me in. I push. Trying not to hurt him, I feel a spongy give against my head. Push. Push.
"Scotty...." So different from the locker room. I am in charge now, can read his face and body. He gasps in pain and pleasure, catches his breath as my weight crushes him. Our eyes search before his lift up and up till they roll back in his head and touch the sky outside the wall behind my bed. My balls lash against his ass. It is...surreal? I feel the heat squeeze tighter around me; he works his muscles to keep me inside him. I happily oblige.
Dex's hands hook under his knees, pulling his hunky thighs back wider, tighter to his chest, curling his ass upwards so I can forge even deeper. I grab his feet and arch my back. Would I break him? Or will he break me in all the more significant ways? I feel tight pressure on my dick and the most awesome feeling in my super-sensitive head--a tingle and a tickle and itch and spark shooting into my balls and throughout my body. Fuck, I'm hooked.
His curls are damp. His lips are plump and lonely. I bend and take them in my mouth again. He whimpers a little, and I move my hips faster and harder, drawing groans of pleasure from him every time I bottom out. I feel it coming as his hands mash my head against his again. Almost. There. That spot. Can't stop.
I roar in his mouth as I explode deep inside him, setting off his own torrent that sprays between our bodies, its umami richness hitting my nose. I love the idea that we made this together. The snotty, sweaty, salty spunk of our coupling create an intimacy I never imagined. I cannot let go of it.
We breathe for each other, our mouths still joined. Never stop. My mind is racing away from me, and he is everywhere in it. When will our breathing feel normal? When can we do this again?
"Mmmmm." He drops his legs. I touch my fingers to his cheek and trace his lower lip. I don't know the way forward, but I know there's no going back.