“Yeah. Before I was ready,” he says, his jaw tight. But then he rolls his shoulders, like he’s shrugging it off, or maybe just moving on.
“That sucks, man. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” I say, a pang of sympathy tugging on my heart for whatever he went through.
“That’s why I’d rather speak up. You know?” He looks to me, waits, a man-to-man moment. Wiseass Grant has left the elevator. Hell, he hasn’t been a wiseass this whole ride.
Solemnly, I nod. “I do. I absolutely do.”
He exhales deeply, the sound of relief. “What about you? Did you have to do a big song-and-dance show your rookie season too?”
With a straight face, I answer him. “I did. I chose tap for my routine.”
“Ah, so that was your pick in the talent portion of the coming out pageant?”
“Of course. What conveys it better than that?”
“Little else,” he says with a grin.
The elevator stops at my floor. As the doors open, I ask, “What floor are you on?”
“Sixth.”
I stick my arm between the doors to keep them open. This convo isn’t finished. “But in all seriousness, I wasn’t quite as smooth as you. Honestly, I didn’t know what I was doing.” The memory flashes clearly of awkward, unsure me. “I wrote it down. On a sheet of paper. Photocopied it.”
His eyes light up with interest. “Yeah? You were going to go the ‘letter to my teammates’ route?”
The elevator buzzes a complaint, signaling it doesn’t want to entertain this talk. The machine wants to send Grant upstairs, but fuck that. Some talks aren’t meant to remain unfinished.
I nod to the quiet hall. “Let’s let the elevator do its business. Walk with me, and I’ll tell you the rest.”
He steps out, and we head down the carpeted hallway. I swallow a little roughly, vividly remembering my first spring training four years ago. “I had this whole letter ready to go. I have a boyfriend, but even if I didn’t, don’t worry. I’m still me.”
“And did you share it with them?”
I shake my head. “No. I read it in front of the mirror. Like it was a poem I was practicing for lit class in college. And it sounded so stupid that I crumpled it up and threw it out. Anyway . . .” I heave a sigh and scrub a hand over my jaw. “It took me a while to figure out what to say. I’m not a . . . sharer.”
That’s the understatement of the year. Of my life.
“Not everyone is. Nothing wrong with that.”
“But it was dragging me down, an albatross hung around my neck. So finally, a couple weeks in, I just told the guys when we were playing video games.”
“And?”
A small smile tugs at my lips as I remember that night. “Chance said Cool, and we can talk about that if you want, but I’d really like to beat our roommates in Madden first.”
“And did you? Beat them?”
I chuckle as we near my room. “We did. Easier to focus after I got that off my chest. Then Chance asked me more questions. He was engaged then. He’s married now to Natasha, but he’s been a relationship guy for as long as I’ve known him. So, he was easy to talk to. Wanted to know if there was someone I was involved with. I said yes. Then he went all Sherlock Holmes and said, ‘that must be why you’re always talking on the phone at night.’”
“Were you?”
“Yeah. The guy I was seeing at the time was . . . chatty.”
“And you’re not?”
Laughing, I scratch my jaw. “I guess I’m chatty this second. But no, not usually. And I’m more of a texter, anyway.”
“And what about the rest of the team? Did you say something to them?”
“The next day, I said something at practice. It was not my finest moment.” I grimace. I’d worked like hell, learning to speak smoothly in front of a crowd, and I wish I’d handled that better. Less . . . chip-on-my-shoulder-y. “I said, ‘this doesn’t mean I’m checking you out in the locker room.’”
Grant feigns shock. “What? You’re not staring at every other guy around you? You don’t want to bang everything with a dick? C’mon. If you like dudes, you must like every dude, right?”
I smile, digging his sense of humor. “That’s the gist of it. So, I asked if they wanted to bang every woman they saw.”
“That made it clear, I hope.”
I snort. “Not entirely. A couple of guys were like, I’m up for pretty much any chick who wants to sleep with me.”
Grant cracks up. “Men. We’re pigs, right?”
“Total fucking pigs,” I add.
“Did your boyfriend come to games?”
Unfortunately, he did, even after I told him we needed to cut back, that I had to focus on the sport. Kyle would hang around after the last pitch, waiting for me in the parking lot. When I explained I needed space so I could play the game, he went out and got a press pass and used that to get into the locker room after a game.