“You struck out a lot,” I told the junior plainly.
“Not all the time! You can’t hit—"
“Nope, sure can’t.” Didn’t matter how he was going to finish that. Hitting wasn’t my strong suit. “Lots of people can’t hit sliders consistently. And that’s why you liked them, right? Not everyone can connect with those but you can. You worked at it and now you can do something difficult, so you wanted to hit them all the time.”
“Yeah, I mastered it.” He frowned. “This is related to you not being straight?” At least he seemed genuinely curious now. Even Ted watched with mild interest, trying to see where this was going.
“Being bi scared the hell out of me,” I told them. I laughed. That wasn’t that long ago and it seemed so far away. “It was really hard to figure this out and admit what I am. Sometimes I can’t believe how cool with it I am now, but it’s awesome.” Being comfortable in my own skin was awesome.
“Maybe it’s not much, I don’t know,” I continued, kinda speaking to the ground and sky more than him. This felt kinda personal, so it was a little weird, but the words were sincere. “I’m actually pretty proud of how far I’ve come. When people just assume, ‘oh, he’s gay.’” I frowned. “It’s like undoing all that work. It’s important to me. I worked hard to get here.”
Not everyone had to get it, but I wished it wasn’t too much to ask for my friends and teammates to try. But that would mean considering things they wanted to block out, all the big gay… gayness of their captain.
We stood there in silence while I tried not to freak out. I prepared myself for some wise crack, for him to miss the point, for—
“Oh,” he said quietly. He gave me a smile. “I get it now.”
That was really awesome, but I didn’t know what to do next, and neither did they. We all stood there awkwardly.
“Is it insensitive to say this is weird?” Ted asked.
“No,” I told him. “I think so too.” Any capital M moments had with a dude who wasn’t Ryan were kinda weird.
Kevin Zebras cleared his throat and told me, “Okay, well, I’m gonna go to freaking class.” Better late than never, I guess. He nodded at both of us and went back inside.
Huh.
“This must be frustrating,” Ted told me. “But you just gotta let it play out,” he advised. “I think you might be surprised. It took you some time to figure stuff out, it’s gonna take everyone else some time too.” He looked out into the boring parking lot.
Wasn’t terrible advice, but it was kinda weird he was the one giving it to me. “Why are you so cool with this now? You weren’t before.”
“Guess I changed my mind,” he tried. “I’m a complex guy.”
I scoffed. “No, you’re not.”
“No, I’m not,” he admitted with a smile. “But I’m capable of learning.” Huh. “A year ago, I would have called someone a fag or a fruit or a loser for having hair like this,” he said, gesturing to his own head. “Yet here I am, and I totallyrockthis look.” Nope, not worth correcting him. He shrugged. “Things change.”
“Yeah, I know that.” Easier than addressing his hair.
“Not that long ago, I didn’t even know I knew any gay people. Now I do and I’m okay with it.” He looked at me frankly. “You should give the team a chance to do the right thing.” Then he went inside too.
Dammit, I thought I’d made a decision. I was done. I wouldn’t be captain. It’s just. Hadn’t really expected Zebras to come around, to listen to me.
Just when I thought I was out, they wanted me to not be out anymore. No, that wasn’t how it went. Huh? They were my thoughts, they could go however I wanted. What did that even mean? Out of what? The closet? Yeah, my team probably didn’t want me to be out of the closet anymore.
Maybe that wasn’t very fair. Zebras, ugh, his name was Kevin. Whether he voted for me or not, it seemed like he understood me for a moment. Hell, I’d rather have that than him voting for me.
Not that he could vote for me because I wasn’t even putting my name in to be captain. Right? Ugh, that wasn’t even a question a few minutes ago. I’d already decided. I thought I had.
* * *
Ryan
Luke and I survived another week, mostly because he wouldn’t let me do any of the wilder things on the list at the moment because he was sure I’d go overboard after being a criminal wasn’t as crime-y as I thought. He went to go pick up the chicken coop remains one day with his dad, but you weren’t supposed to return to the scene of the crime. Yep, that’s totally why I didn’t go and not because I didn’t want to.
There were other things to occupy me anyway.
I learned how to knit, joined our school’s knitting club—our school had a knitting club—then dropped out. Knitting was boring. I learned how to apply cat’s eye make-up, I learned the least painful way to wax one’s legs, and I learned how short a mini skirt could be before it was considered slutty. Then I caught on that Lydia was adding girly stuff to my list.
