by Vicki Tharp
“Fine.” Though it really wasn’t. At least one of them was smiling. “Put me on the list. Now, tell me what I’m doing here.”
Trevor’s smile dropped, and the pen fell from his hand. “It could be nothing, but I didn’t want it to turn into something and have it completely blindside you.”
Alex plopped into the single seat across from Trevor’s desk. Trevor’s office was only big enough for the one visitor chair, so Trevor walked around and leaned against the front of the desk looking like he had bad news to break—like someone had keyed Alex’s Challenger, or his dog had died.
Only, he didn’t have a dog.
And his car was tucked safely away at his apartment since he’d run to the gym that day.
“Spit it out.” Watch it be something stupid. Trevor did have the rare flare for the dramatic.
“Fine.”
Trevor spun his laptop around and pressed play. Alex watched as he and Elijah came to life on a nineteen-inch screen in full retina display.
“I’m coming.” It was Alex’s own voice. The sound card on the computer wasn’t too shabby either. He could almost feel the scratch of the words as they’d tore out of his throat. He watched as 2D Elijah took him deep.
Alex had already relived that moment every night while he lay in bed, and driving down the street, and working out. Seeing Elijah go down on him as it rolled across the screen wouldn’t help Alex get his mind right.
Jesus Christ. 3D Alex’s dick pressed against his fly, and he reached out and slammed the lid down. He glanced over his shoulder at the door to make sure no one had seen, but Trevor’s office door didn’t have a window. “What the fuck, man. Why are you showing me this?”
“You never told me you decided to work for Black Stallion.”
“And? Who are you? My mother?” Trevor had been his physical therapist from day one post-surgery. They’d spent a lot of time together. They’d become friends, good friends, but that didn’t mean Trevor had the right to judge him. “What’s the big deal? You’re the genius who suggested I do it to begin with.”
“I don’t care that you did it—”
“Great.” Alex stood, prepared to leave. “Now that I have your blessing, Mom, can I go?”
Not that he needed Trevor’s permission to leave, or do porn, or do anything else in his life that Alex wanted to.
“What are you, sixteen? Sit your ass down.” Trevor’s jaw worked back and forth as if he were considering what he would say next. “Jesus, you’re more of a queen than I am.”
Alex plopped back down into the chair, and the seat cushion protested with a loud ppffft. He made a get-on-with-it-motion with his hand.
When Trevor had Alex’s begrudging, if not full, attention, he said, “I didn’t find your video on Black Stallion’s website.”
The unease that had sloshed around in Alex’s gut earlier turned into a whirlpool. He leaned forward in the chair, his hands gripping his knees. “What are you getting at?”
“I got the link in an email from a PT colleague who sent it to me and a few others in the pro athlete business.”
“He likes gay porn, so what?”
Trevor gave him a slow, incredulous blink. “Were you in a corner jerking off while the powers that be passed out common sense?”
Trevor paused as if he expected a response. When Alex didn’t give one, he continued. “He wasn’t sharing the video because he liked it, he shared it because he was trying to figure out who you were. He wanted to know if any of us had a name to put with the dick.” His tone had that duh quality to it Alex found so annoying.
“So?” God, he really did sound like a moody teenager. “They never show my face. Out of the millions of men in this country, I doubt they’ll pull my name out of their asses. Besides, what difference does it make to them who some headless guy in a random porn is?”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
Alex leaned back and raised his hands in defeat. “Clearly not.”
“This guy noticed your scar from your Tommy John surgery. Saw your bee tattoo on your ribs. He wants to know who you are. He knows whoever it is would have had to have had PT after surgery and thought one of us might know who it was. The guy’s a dick and has the tabloids on their favorite’s list.”
Alex’s mouth went dry. He had to peel his tongue off the roof of his mouth to speak. “What did you tell him?”
Trevor grabbed both sides of his head. “Oh my God. What do you think I said?” But Trevor didn’t give Alex a chance to answer. “I told him I had no fucking clue.”
Alex closed his eyes and took one of those deep, calming breaths he used to take on the mound. The ones he’d learned to take to decelerate his heart, to get his breathing under control to keep him from hyperventilating, but he could hear the rasp of his breath over the blood whooshing past his ears.
“Alex, look at me.” When he did, Trevor said, “This day and age, it shouldn’t be a big deal for a professional athlete to come out as gay—”
“I’m not gay.” Alex was getting tired of saying it, especially when it seemed like Trevor never heard him. “You know Black Stallion makes their performers sign a contract stating they’re straight, right?”
“Perceived as gay, then. Can you name any current and out gay pro baseball players? No? Me either.”
“In the grand scheme of things, I’m a nobody.”
“Trust me, brother, this video hits the tabloids, you’ll become somebody. You need to lay low. Don’t do any more shoots until this thing blows over. Or ever. The cash isn’t worth it.”
“Says the man cashing a paycheck every month and eating something besides Ramen noodles.”
Even before the email, Alex had almost decided against going back to Black Stallion. He’d already spent too many hours with Elijah on his brain, wrestling with his sexuality, and trying to square who he’d thought he was with who he’d been that weekend.
All that angst and anxiety had spun him off his game, making him lose focus on winning an invite to spring training, that one tiny thread of his career that he clung to like a lifeline.
And he refused to let that go.
“Look, man, no judgment here. You do what you gotta do. I’m trying to watch your back is all.”
“I appreciate it.” Alex stood. He needed to get out of there, to process what Trevor had told him. There had to be some way to shut this down before it got out of hand. “We done here?”
“One more question.”
“What is it?”
“How was he?” His low voice had that conspiratory tone to go along with the tell-me-everything smile.
Alex shoved his hands into his pockets. He wasn’t smiling. “I’m not going there with you.”
“Okay, fine. You don’t kiss and tell. I can admire that. Just tell me, was he hung? He looks hung.”
Trevor was such a cock hound. Despite everything, Alex chuckled. “Bye, Trevor.”
“What a shit show.” Elijah sat at a table with Demetri Stavros, the art professor and now friend. He stared up at the big screen across the room as he nursed a beer in a dive bar a block off campus.
Saturday night and the bar was jam-packed—all the college kids getting drunk on cheap pitchers of beer and making fools of themselves as they tried to get laid—four weeks to the day since the last time Elijah had seen Alex.
Much longer than that since he’d been laid himself.
In the preceding weeks, Elijah hadn’t been able to wipe Alex from his mind. Hell, he’d taken Shannon, the woman from the life drawing class, up on her offer of coffee a few times. She was a sweet girl but, in the end, he’d only been in it for the caffeine and the conversation.
Alex had been so stuck in Elijah’s subconscious that when he’d decided he had to do something besides go to class and study and think about Alex, he’d gone to the campus rec center and amongst all the signups for fall rec leagues—racquetball, basketball, archery, rock climbing, co-ed volleyball—he’d signed up for the rec baseball team
starting up the next week.
He hadn’t played baseball since he’d aged out of little league.
And besides catching a World Series game on television every year or so, he’d thought little about the sport.
Until four weeks ago.
Freud might have had a few interesting things to say about that.
Now, his infatuation with Alex bordered on the obsessive. From trolling Google for old interviews and film clips and social media accounts, to jacking off at night imagining it was Alex’s hands on his cock, not his own.
He really had to get a grip.
At a weak moment, at the risk of Niko finding out he was bi, he’d considered taking Demetri up on his previous offer at a chance to get to know him better.
Ultimately, it hadn’t mattered how attractive the professor was, a friendship was all Elijah wanted from him. Elijah didn’t want a dick attached to just any man, he wanted a specific man on the other end of that dick.
He wanted Alex.
On the TV screen, several reporters had cornered Alex as he left the San Fernando Sports Complex where many pro athletes worked out in the offseason. They shoved microphones in his face, throwing questions, demanding answers.
“How did anybody figure out it was him in the Black Stallion video?” Demetri asked. “I’ve seen it. Niko made sure his face never showed.”
“You think the reporters are bad? Social media is blowing up. Rumors are flying—about someone recognizing his tattoo from a gay orgy, to a physical therapist who saw the scar on his elbow and somehow figured it out, to a girl he’d slept with who’d recognized him. I don’t know what’s true, if any of it is.”
The news report went to a triple split screen. On the right: Alex as he tried to plow through the reporters to get to his car. In the middle: a still shot of Alex’s torso from the video—with Elijah’s head in Alex’s lap, thank you very much. On the left : a photo of Alex in a team locker room all sweaty after a game with his shirt stripped off. It had to have been from a couple of years ago. There was no visible scar on his elbow at that time, but the bee tattoo over his left ribcage was unique and damning.
“What about you,” Demetri said. “Anyone recognize you?”
“Not yet, though I’m sure it’s coming. Luckily, I’m unknown. Nobody really cares if I’m on video sucking a guy off.”
On screen, Alex managed to get to his car, but as the reporters surrounded the vehicle, it was apparent Alex wasn’t going anywhere until he answered some questions.
Someone at the table next to Elijah called out to the bartender. “Hey, man, turn it up.”
The crowd also quieted down a bit. At least enough for Elijah to make out what the reporters were saying if he listened close enough.
“Alex, Alex.” A female reporter elbowed to the front and shoved a microphone in Alex’s face. “Do you deny that’s you in the video?”
“Pretty hard to deny at this point.” There were dark smudges under Alex’s eyes that didn’t have anything to do with having applied Eye Black to block the glare of the sun.
“I’d be so pissed,” Demetri said.
Television Alex looked more resigned than angry.
“Aren’t you embarrassed—” the reporter started.
Alex managed a cocky grin. It almost made it to his eyes. “I did a job—a damn good job if the video ratings are anything to go by. I get paid for my time. Same as you.”
“But this was porn. Gay porn—”
“Trust me, lady, I’m intimately aware of that.”
A round of laughter rumbled through the bar. Elijah and Demetri knocked their glasses together in a silent toast. Elijah gave Alex points for owning his decisions.
“But I don’t get—”
“No, lady, what I don’t get is why you all care? Straight actors play gay roles all the time. Reporters weren’t in Gyllenhaal’s and Ledger’s faces after they’d filmed Brokeback Mountain asking if they were gay. This is no different.”
Another reporter squeezed his way in. He was lean and femme and, not that Elijah was judging, but if anyone on that screen was gay, it was that guy. “Are you straight?” The reporter wasn’t afraid to come right out and ask the question on everybody’s mind.
“Are you?” Alex countered.
“That’s no one’s business.”
“Exactly.” The reporters fell silent a beat, then Alex said, “Here’s what everyone needs to know.” The patrons in the bar got quiet, and Alex took one of the reporter’s microphones and held it to his mouth. “Gay or straight, my fastball breaks a hundred, my changeup is sick, and with training and hard work, my curve is getting nastier every day. When a pitch leaves my hand, the batter is going to have more to worry about than where I put my… bleep.”
The network bleeped it when Alex had said ‘dick,’ but it didn’t take a genius to read his lips.
A cheer went up in the bar. From the gays and the straights. Gotta love a progressive college campus.
The news cut to commercial. Demetri laughed. “Fuck me, man. You’ve got yourself a winner.”
Elijah tossed back the rest of his beer. “He’s not mine. He’s a guy I shot a scene with.”
Demetri eyed him as he finished his beer as well, looking like he was about to call bullshit. But instead, he said, “You should give him a call. He could probably use a friend.”
“I didn’t get his number.” Elijah still kicked himself about that one. But really, if he had, what would he have expected to happen? That they’d hang out? Go drinking at the bars? Play video games?
Hook up?
Then what, genius?
“I can get it from Niko if you’d like.” Demetri sounded more like a matchmaker than a college professor.
Elijah wanted to say yes. But in his heart, he knew pursuing Alex would be stupid, even though Elijah couldn’t get the guy out of his head. It was nothing more than a wishful infatuation brought on by some ball tingling kisses and a hella hot hand job.
All that aside, Elijah knew himself. He was attracted to men but preferred women for his romantic relationships. Whatever the hell was going on in Alex’s head, Elijah didn’t want to barge into his life and scramble him up and make him question his sexuality any more than he might already be doing now.
Especially if nothing could come of it.
And Elijah knew Alex had to be questioning. Elijah didn’t care what anyone said. A man didn’t kiss another man the way Alex had kissed him and not, on some level, have felt the attraction.
Besides, they couldn’t risk doing anything that jeopardized negating their residuals clause on their contract with Black Stallion.
Neither one of them could afford that.
“No.” Elijah was probably the last person Alex wanted to hear from. A twinge of regret pinched in the center of Elijah’s chest. “I don’t want his number.”
8
On the mound, in the cages at the San Fernando Sports Complex, the SFSC, Alex could leave his jacked-up life and the stack of reporters—more persistent than a drug-resistant STI—outside.
The past week had been insane ever since the press had pushed his video with Black Stallion into the mainstream spotlight. He’d never gotten that much press, not when he’d been a first-round draft pick and not in the aftermath of injuring his elbow.
And the blowback from some of his friends had been equally distressing, to the point he’d stayed off social media and pretty much stopped answering texts and calls.
Though to be fair, the sizable residual check he’d received that morning from Black Stallion no doubt had something to do with all the downloads the video was getting from the free publicity.
The sex-negative media would make everyone believe that what he’d done was wrong, and the random people on the street that reporters had interviewed seemed to agree. But it was probably those same people who’d gone straight home and paid good money to watch Elijah go down on him.
No publicity is bad publicity.
Maybe. But
whoever had said that hadn’t been outed for being in gay porn. He didn’t like how it had happened, but his wallet hadn’t complained.
“Throw the heater again,” Alex’s pitching coach, Fernando Gomez, said from the other end of the cage. The two-time Cy-Young award winner looked like he could take the mound and win it all again even though he’d been retired for ten years.
Behind home plate, Alex’s catcher buddy, Ethan Locke from the Hawks, squatted behind the plate, slapped his glove, then held it out as a target for Alex. “Bring it.”
Behind Ethan and outside the cage, Gomez aimed the radar gun as Alex went into the windup. His arm hadn’t felt this good since way before the surgery. If nothing else, the porn cash had given him the means to hire one of the best pitching coaches on the west coast. Plus a little extra to slip Ethan’s way to compensate him for his time behind the plate, though Ethan would have done it for nothing.
And because of Trevor and Gomez and Ethan—and Black Stallion—for the first time since the Hawks had released him, Alex had reason to hope that his career may not be over.
In the past few weeks, Gomez had made slight adjustments to Alex’s delivery and follow through that seemed to be making a difference on his speed, control, and spin rate.
Alex’s lead foot landed on the slope of the mound, and he let the ball fly, taking care not to open his shoulders too soon or release his grip too late.
The ball landed in the web of Ethan’s glove with a sharp thwap.
“Jesucristo,” Gomez had a self-satisfied smile on his face. “One-oh-three.”
Ethan went to his knees and pushed up his mask—one of those hockey-style catcher’s masks custom painted with the Hawks’ signature silver and blue colors. “I can’t wait to see those fuckers’ faces at spring training when they see you throw.”
Alex walked off the mound and caught the ball Ethan threw back. “If I score an invite.”
“Kick that out of your mind,” Gomez said. “I’m working on that. That’s my job. Your one job is throwing the best pitch that you can, each time you step on that mound. That’s the only thing you’ve got any control over.”