“Fine,” he grumbled, taking a long draw off his beer. I thought that was the closest I’d get to an admission from him as he rubbed the back of his neck. Then he crooked a finger against the side of his chin, twisting to the left, then the right, then the left again to crack his neck.
As I watched him go through his nervous routine, I regretted pushing him when he obviously wasn’t ready. Something inside of him clicked and he started to talk again.
“There may have been benefits included, but really, it wasn’t more than that. Neither of us are stupid enough to get involved with a teammate, so we settled for getting cozy in the closet when the urge struck,” he admitted, still unable to look at me.
“We figured it worked pretty damn well that the two gay guys wound up in the same hotel room. What we did was no different from the shit the rest of the guys were doing, except we didn’t have to go out and find a new trick in each town.”
“So, you fucked and you were close enough that his leaving got to you, but you’re going to tell me you weren’tinvolved?” I shouldn’t push the issue, but I was pissed.
I hated the fact that he was obviously in denial about what they meant to one another. Or that he didn’t trust me enough to be honest. Either way, he was lying tosomeoneand that shit wasn’t going to fly.
“Yes, Mason, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Look, just because I don’t want a relationship doesn’t mean I don’t want to get laid every once in a while,” he argued. “And not wanting a commitment doesn’t mean I want a random stranger. Eric understood that and respected how I felt. He’s in the same boat as me and we did what needed to be done.”
“Then why the head trip? Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve sworn you’d never do anything that fucked with your game. What’s so special about him that he was worth it?” As I ranted, I thought I sounded like the scorned friend who’d never be what Sean needed.
And how could I be when he had no clue that he was so much more than just my best friend?
Sean jumped off the couch and started pacing around the room, squeezing the back of his neck. “Because other than you, he’s the only person who’s come close to understanding how much baseball means to me,” he admitted. “I knew he wasn’t cut out for no-strings sex but he was willing to settle for that for me. I fucking knew he wanted more, but I couldn’t do it because today was inevitable. If it hurts this bad now, I don’t even want to think about what it would have done to either of us if we’d been closer. He’s a good guy and yeah, I’m going to miss him. There, are you happy now?”
Sean slammed his beer down on the table with more force than necessary before storming off down the hall. I sat there waiting for him, wondering if Iwashappier knowing the truth.
No, I really wasn’t. Hearing him admit that there was something going on with Eric stung. Knowing I’d poured salt in an open wound made me feel like a colossal bag of dicks.
I gave both of them credit for at least acknowledging who and what they were. I was too much of a coward for that.
I figured I had it easy because my door swung both ways.
I tried to ignore the way Sean looked when he walked around shirtless back when we lived together.
I went out and screwed anything with tits and a heartbeat, and no one needed to know that it was Sean’s face I saw when I came.
It was safer that way.
Safe wasn’t working for me anymore. Safe meant walking around with this huge secret of my own that no one, not even my best friend, knew. Teresa had her suspicions, but I’d laughed every time she accused me of spending too much time with my man-crush, telling her she was crazy.
Sean was gone long enough that I wondered if he was locked in the bathroom calling a cab to come and pick him up. It was stupid of me to pry into his life that way. Other than admitting that he wasn’t interested in women when I kept pressing him to be my wingman, we’d never talked about what happened behind closed doors. I never let myself forget what a show of trust it was for him to make that revelation.
My chest filled with pride, knowing that he shared his secret with me when not even his family knew the truth. And I’d carried around the shame of my cowardice ever since.
Our lives would have been so different if I’d had the strength to say, “Me too.”
After twenty agonizing minutes, I pulled myself off the couch and went in search of my friend so I could apologize. The door to the bathroom was wide open and the room was empty.
There was no sign of him anywhere until I rounded the corner and saw his long legs hanging off the end of the spare bed. I called out his name, my voice barely a whisper, only to be answered with a soft snore.
I tried not to think about why he was so worn out. The jealousy coursing through me as images of him and Eric sharing one last night together was more bitter than anything I’d experienced when I knew my wife was cheating on me.
When I’d thought about her with another man, my only concern was whether she was making him wrap it so she didn’t bring home an unpleasant souvenir.
When I thought about Eric giving Sean a final farewell before he headed out of town, my chest tightened and it became hard to breathe.
That should have been a bright red flag, but I pushed those thoughts away, too. Pretty soon, I was going to fall over backward from all the shit I pushed to the back of my brain in an attempt to ignore what I knew to be true.
I carefully untied his sneakers and tossed them across the room. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you a bit more comfortable,” I whispered as I tugged on his arm.
He was a big guy, with at least three inches and thirty pounds of muscle on me, so I wasn’t about to drag him up the bed. Knowing my luck, I’d wind up pulling a muscle and have to come up with a good cover story when I walked into the trainer’s office tomorrow.
“Just leave me be,” he grumbled, reaching over his head for a pillow.
