“I know,” I said, looking down.
Coach reached across the table and placed his huge left paw on my right shoulder. “Look at me,” he said. I looked up at him. Coach’s eyes were incredibly kind. His skin, sort of a dark mocha color, was starting to sag ever so slightly around his cheeks. “Pressure isn’t easy to deal with. You can talk to me.”
And I thought to myself: Yes, I should.
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. So I said, “I just have a lot on my mind, is all.”
Coach crossed his arms, his eyes not wavering from mine. “Shoot,” he said.
I could suddenly hear every noise like it was magnified. The air-conditioning chirped every few seconds, interrupting a low hum. The high-pitched buzz that goes along with the fluorescent lights rumbled through my ears.
It was just us, and I imagined the conversation we could have if I just told him. What would he say? Would he turn his back on me, or would he understand? If he didn’t, would he hate me? Kick me off the team?
But it was too important. Messing up with Coach would screw up my chances of getting a college scholarship, and without one, I could forget ever making the NFL. I couldn’t risk that.
“My folks,” I said, and then I closed my eyes, hating myself for making stuff up.
Coach leaned forward. “What about your folks?” he asked.
I kept my eyes closed. I couldn’t look at Coach. “They’re having problems,” I said, ashamed. I was saying something that was probably not true, but what if it was? How could I lie about something serious when I was thinking about some other stupid thing that no one even cared about but me? If something was really up with my parents, I would never be able to forgive myself. I felt a queasy sensation rise in my throat.
“I’m sorry, Bobby.”
I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead, not at Coach, but sort of through him. I’d never lied to him before, and this felt like a stupid one. Why not just tell him what was really going on? But it was too late. You couldn’t say your parents’ marriage was in trouble and then bring up something like sex.
I held my breath. I took the feelings and balled them as tight as I could and pictured myself throwing a bomb with them from one end zone to another, as far and high as I could manage.
One hundred yards.
“It’s okay. I’m fine,” I said.
He came and stood by my chair. I stood up, figuring he wanted me to leave. And then he hugged me, a big, clumsy hug.
“You can talk to me anytime,” he said, his ear right next to mine, muffling the words.
I stood there, paralyzed in his grip. When Coach let go I couldn’t look at him.
“Do you need anything?” he said.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Everything will be fine.”
He nodded, and I felt like I had said the right thing, at least.
“I’m sorry this is happening. But you gotta let the feelings out, Bobby. Keeping things inside, that’ll tear you up.”
4
“Watch the master at work,” I told Austin as we studied our playbooks out in my front yard after practice. I put down my playbook and picked up a football, tossed it lightly in the air to myself, twirled it in my hand until I felt the laces in the right place, gripped the ball, and threw a bullet of a pass at the tire hanging from the big oak tree on the other side of the yard. It ricocheted off the top rim of the tire.
“That’s great, dude,” Austin said. “Were you aiming for the house, or the street?”
“I was aiming for your face,” I said.
“Well, do that in a game, maybe,” he replied, stretching his legs out in front of him and reaching for his toes. “That way, maybe a pass will come close to me once in a while.”
I sat back down, grabbed my playbook, and swatted Austin’s shoulder, hard. He flinched.
“Hey! What the hell was that for?” he asked.
“Bug on your shoulder,” I said, opening my book again. “You know, this tier-formation thing could really work. I mean, if we get a chance to play a team with just two or three players, or perhaps even more if some of the players have no legs, we should have a good shot at a touchdown.”
“You’re a really weird guy, you know that?” replied Austin, flicking the cover of my notebook.
“Thanks, man. Appreciate it,” I replied.
“Anytime, dude.”
“Where do you line up in Forty-eight Tier Gun Double-Z Flag?” I asked.
Austin gave me a dirty look. “Where I always line up in tier, moron,” he answered. “On the right side.”
“Fine, smart-ass. What do you do then?”
“Well, let’s say you actually get the play off in time, in that case, I’d fake a block on the linebacker closest to me, and then roll out and find an open space. I’m your second option. Rahim’s the first.”
“Amazing,” I said. “You get a D-minus in basic math, but you somehow know that.”
He used his playbook to swat me back in the arm. “D-plus,” he said. “And that shit was two years ago. Find something new to make fun of me for. How about Eighty-one Tier Toss Right?” Austin asked me.
I closed the book and visualized it. “I fake a toss to Somers, going left, and instead toss back and right to Mendez, who’ll have a whole bunch of blockers ahead of him. Easy.”
“You got it, bro,” Austin said, jumping to his feet and shaking out his legs.
“I still think Coach has lost his mind with this formation,” I said. “I mean, it’s not just me, right?”
“Yeah, Coach C is losing his mind for sure,” Austin replied, rubbing his scalp frantically, like he had fleas.
“Totally. I mean, his formation would be a little better if we had a tight end who didn’t run like my dead grandmother—”
“Bite me,” said Austin. “I can run.” He fake-lunged at me and I barely flinched.
“Yeah, from the law.”
“I’d kick your ass in a race,” Austin said. I turned around and watched as he again stretched his legs out in front of him and reached for his toes.
“Care to make it interesting?” I asked.
I’d attended the Nike combine in Palo Alto earlier in the summer, a day of athletic testing when scouts poked and prodded us like pieces of meat and timed us doing everything from running forty meters to getting dressed in the morning. The fastest guys ran the forty-meters in about 4.3 to 4.4 seconds. I came in just above 5, right with the linemen who weighed over two hundred seventy pounds. It wasn’t good, and that was one reason I wasn’t the most sought-after quarterback in the state.
Austin laughed at me—actually laughed, the prick. “Dude, you’re slow even for a white guy. I’ll tear you up in a race. I bet you a buck.”
I loved how my friend was, like, Mexican only when it was convenient, forgetting he was half white, too. We walked across the yard to the oak tree, which we had used as an end-zone marker when we were younger. From there to the other end zone, where the house ends on the driveway side, it was about twenty yards. We decided to use the end of the house as the finish line.
“Why don’t you just give me the buck now?” Austin said, shaking his legs loose.
“Because then you’d have to give me two after I win,” I replied.
Austin called the race. “On your mark, get set . . . go!” We took off and I had a quick lead after a few steps, but Austin turned on his burners. He accelerated, and once again I was faced with the sad fact that I’m just not as fast a runner as I could be.
He was going to win by a lot, so I did the next best thing: I fell to the ground, grabbing my ankle and howling.
“Oh, shit!” Austin yelled as he crossed the finish line and looked back at me, writhing in pain on my back. He sprinted back over and knelt next to me. “Bobby, you okay?”
It was a trick I’d learned back when I wrestled in junior high. I quickly grabbed him by the arm and flipped him. Austin might be bigger than me, but he wasn’t stronger. I pinned him easil
y.
“Get off me, dude!” Austin was squirming under me, trying his best to break free.
“Make me,” I said, panting.
“Try this on a girl,” Austin said, and I rolled off of him. He fell away and collapsed on the grass, huffing.
I stood, and wiped the dirt and grass off my arms and legs. Austin and I have been wrestling like that for maybe ten years, and it wasn’t the first time he’d called me gay in one way or another. But it just hit me different this time. Maybe it was all the time I’d been spending thinking about coming out. I looked down at him, lying in the grass. Austin was more than just a teammate, he was like a brother to me. We didn’t have as much in common at seventeen as we did at nine, but here we were, still together.
“So where’s my dollar?” Austin said as he got up to his feet.
I turned away and looked up at the sky, which was unbelievably blue. “Calm down, I’m good for it,” I replied.
I heard Austin rustling through his pockets, and when I turned and looked, he had dug a circular green container out of his pants. At first I thought it was gum, but when he pried the top off, the powerfully bitter, fruity-mint smell told me it wasn’t.
“What the hell?” I said as he pinched a small amount of black gunk between his thumb and forefinger and put it in his mouth, between his bottom lip and gum.
“Tell me you’re not dipping,” I said.
Austin shrugged. “I like it,” he said.
“Austin, that’s disgusting. Not to mention how bad it is for you.”
He shrugged, and put the container back in his shorts pocket. “This is the apple-flavored kind.”
“Man, if only there was another, less lethal way to get the taste of apples in your mouth,” I said, shaking my head.
“Shut the hell up,” he said, a tiny bit of brown dribbling from the side of his packed lip.
I worried about Austin sometimes. His judgment.
“What do you wanna do?” I asked, trying to forget the fact that he had tobacco in his mouth.
“Watch TV?” he said. “We never do that.”
I gave him a dirty look. I barely ever watched, unless it was a football game or maybe baseball with my dad. I preferred actually doing things, but that’s just me.
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, I forgot, you’re Amish.”
I laughed. “I’m Amish because I don’t watch TV?”
“You don’t do a lot of things, dude,” he said, walking to the front door. As he swung it open a blast of air-conditioning hit us in the face. It felt good. We walked in and sat on the living-room couch. My folks were out. “You hardly ever drink, don’t smoke, you don’t do drugs, and I don’t even think you have sex.”
I grabbed my dad’s L.A. Times and rearranged it more neatly on the glass coffee table. “Whatever,” I said.
“What’s up with you and Carrie?” Austin asked.
I laughed, because we didn’t have serious talks, like almost ever. Rahim and I did that, but not me and Austin. But he didn’t laugh.
The house was incredibly quiet. My folks were both still at work. I looked away from Austin, studied the beige walls. There was a crack near the ceiling.
“You think anything could ever stop you from . . .” and I couldn’t finish the sentence. Being my friend, I thought, but I couldn’t say the words.
Austin looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. “Dude, you just have a stroke or something?”
I turned to Austin and smiled. “Could anything stop you from playing football?”
“No way, dude. I mean, like a bad injury maybe. But no way.”
“Yeah, me neither,” I said. “You ever think about what you’ll do after?” It was another sentence I couldn’t finish. How do you say to your brother, your best buddy, whose only dream is pro football, if you aren’t good enough to play in the NFL?
“I like to talk to girls. You think I could get a job doing that?”
“You could be a pimp,” I said, and he laughed.
“Yes,” he said. “I have a new career. Thanks, dude.”
We just sat there, looking at each other for a while.
“You didn’t answer the question,” he said. “What’s up with you and Carrie?”
My brain was on like three tracks at once, and the thoughts tripped over one another and I realized as I struggled to think of what to say that I was exhausted.
I was tired of thinking about it alone.
I exhaled. “I don’t know,” I said, squirming in my seat.
He reclined, his hands clasped behind his head. “What don’t you know?”
“If I should tell you,” I said. “I think you know.”
And when I said that, I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin because there was almost no going back.
Austin sat up. “Know what?”
I remained still, trying not to even breathe. Maybe if I stayed quiet, we could move on to something else. But at the same time I really wanted to tell him.
“What?” he repeated, and I could hear an edge of panic in his voice.
I sat up and faced him. “Do you know what I’m going to tell you?”
His forehead was creased in a way that I hadn’t seen before. I could almost imagine what Austin was going to look like as a middle-aged guy. “No,” he said.
“I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise not to tell anyone else.”
“Did you get Carrie pregnant?” he said.
I laughed, way too hard. “No!”
“What?” he said.
“I’m not dating Carrie,” I said. “I’m not dating anyone. I’m gay, Austin.”
We sat there, staring at each other for a few seconds. His left eye twitched. Then he laughed.
“Dude,” he said. “Yo. You’re kidding.”
“No,” I answered, unable to look away from his face.
Austin laughed and pounded the arm of the couch with his fist, gently. “No, dude, yo. You shouldn’t say shit like that. People will start to think it’s true.”
“It is true.” My head was buzzing like a hundred bees.
Austin stared at me, with his mouth half open, sort of like an idiot. I wanted to say something that would let him close it.
“For real?” he asked quietly.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Wow,” he said, and then he smiled again. “That’s, wow.”
I laughed. “You already said that.”
Austin laughed, too, and I felt a chest fluttering that made me feel almost elated.
“I’m totally cool with that,” he said.