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Later, in his own room, Javier suffered through a guilty, sleepless night. Zach did deserve better than the assholes he’d fallen for in the past.
Javier, included.
Chapter Five
Javier gave it two weeks. Two weeks before he would mention the break up to Zach. Their contact during those two weeks had been friendly, but brief. Normal clubhouse chit-chat had been easy to do on a long road trip but painful when all Javier had wanted to do was comfort Zach. They’d returned for two days off, days during which Javier had picked up his phone several times, only to convince himself to put it right back down again. Zach needed space to process bad news. He always had.
After resisting the urge to call at midnight on the fifteenth day, Javier waited until six p.m. took a deep breath, and hit dial.
“Hey, it’s me. Javier,” he replied when Zach answered.
“Yeah, your name comes up on my phone.”
Javier winced at his stupidity. “Look, you were holding it together pretty good on the road, but I wanted to check up on you…”
He let the sentence end, wishing he’d thought further than just “I’ll call Zach” before he’d actually dialed the number.
After an uncomfortable silence, Zach said, “I appreciate that.”
Why was he holding back? For a moment, Javier worried that he’d overstepped his bounds. But he couldn’t make himself hang up and leave Zach all alone with his pain. “I know that this is hard for you. I can’t even imagine what you must be feeling. And I wanted to…”
He paused. What did he want? He wanted Zach, but that might not be a possibility. After all, Javier had been the one who’d called things off. “I want to be a better friend to you than I was a boyfriend. I want to know you’re okay.”
Even over the phone, Javier heard Zach’s intake of breath. So, he could still be surprised. “I’m okay. Really.”
“Why don’t you come over?” Javier panicked as the words slipped out. What was he doing? That had to sound like a sleazy come on.
To his surprise, Zach answered easily, “Okay. I actually have something I wanted to talk to you about, anyway.”
Zach agreed to pick up some steaks on his way over, and Javier went to the kitchen to make a quick salad, then out on the veranda to change the tank on the gas grill. When Zach arrived, he let himself in, just like old times, and dropped a plastic shopping bag on the counter.
So, Zach had something he wanted to talk about. Javier wiped his palms on his jeans as he headed through the glass doors from the veranda. He wasn’t holding out hope that it was a let’s-get-back-together talk. He doubted Zach was about to risk another rejection hot on the heels of the last one, and propositioning an ex was risky. Besides, there was no reason for Zach to want him.. Still, Javier felt weird, giddy anticipation, like he was about to get a present.
And really, just having Zach there was present enough for two Christmases. Javier had missed him more than he’d realized during their year apart.
“I did what I could,” Zach said in lieu of greeting, pulling two plastic-wrapped foam trays from the bag. “Not the best selection at six-thirty on a Thursday, but there you have it.”
“Nah, these will be fine.” Javier took the trays with him to the veranda, where he opened them and slapped the meat onto the grill. Normally, he would have taken the time to season them but it was kind of cute how Zach couldn’t handle anything stronger than salt. “Get a couple beers out of the fridge, would you?”
They fell into an unexpectedly easy rhythm, chatting and drinking as Javier grilled the steaks. When Javier said, “I think we’ve got Vancouver sewn up,” Zach agreed without hesitation. When Zach commented on the sloppy pitching of that reliever in Miami, they both laughed. By the time they sat down with their food and their second beers, it had started to feel more comfortable, less like two exes hanging out and more like friends and teammates.
“Can I be sappy for a minute?” Zach asked during a comfortable lull in conversation.
Javier nodded, keeping his eyes on his half-empty plate, because he didn’t want to look at Zach and have him see any crazy hope in his eyes. We’re just friends, he reminded himself.
“It’s nice to have someone to talk to,” Zach said, his voice uncharacteristically wobbly with emotion. “I mean, someone who gets everything. You know what I’m saying?”
Javier let out a breath of mingled relief and disappointment. “Yeah, I do know. I’m real close to Chris, you know, I can bitch to him about stuff with the game, but I can’t tell him about the rest of it.”
“About how tough it is to be a closeted pro ballplayer?” When Javier looked up, a sympathetic smile dimpled Zach’s cheek. “I know. I couldn’t even really talk to Domenic about that, because he kept saying, ‘I know exactly how you feel.’ He worked in Hollywood, he was more or less out. Not out out, but everyone in the industry knew. I felt so isolated in Los Angeles because no one seemed to get it.
