by V. L. Locey
Later that night I found the man who had given me the flowers cleaning up the bonfire area. All of our girls were asleep. Well, they were in their cabins with the lights out, who knew if they were sleeping or not. Alex gave me a wide smile when I stepped up beside him and started gathering up sticky marshmallow roasting sticks.
“I’ve eaten so many s’mores I’m not sure I can bend over.” Alex chuckled then tossed the used sticks into the low fire.
“Same here. I’ll have to walk to North Carolina just to work them off in the morning.” I tossed my handful of sticks into the pit. The fire snapped to life for a moment then died back down. “I wanted to thank you for the bouquet of flowers. They’re really pretty.”
Alex blinked at me in the firelight. “I didn’t give you any flowers, although now I wish I had.”
Someone cleared his throat. Alex and I both turned to look at Garrison standing on the other side of the dwindling fire. He was fresh from the lake by the looks of it. Water streamed from his dark hair. The gray t-shirt he had pulled over his head clung to his upper body like a second skin. His shorts were soaking wet, as were his Crocs. The fire’s low light made shadows dance across his damp face. He stole my breath. I should have reached for Alex’s hand but my fingers hung stupidly by my thigh.
“Sorry to interrupt but I wanted to talk to O’Malley about something personal,” Garrison said, his voice gruffer than usual. I thought to tell him to jump back in the lake but I just could not force the words past my teeth. “Can we walk for a bit?”
“Go on,” Alex said then nodded at the sodden baseballer. “I got this.” I shuffled off towards the counselor’s cabins, Garrison falling into step beside me. His wet feet made squeaky noises inside his Crocs. Crickets quieted as we passed then resumed chirping a moment later. A light breeze blew over Belshaw’s wind chimes, filling the cooling air with metallic tinkles and tings. We reached my cabin, and I climbed onto the porch then turned to look at Garrison lingering at the bottom step.
“What did you want to talk about?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest so my hands wouldn’t be dangling down like fleshy bananas. He glanced up from his feet. The moon was a mere sliver. It was hard to see his expression since I had not turned on my porch light.
“Can we go inside?” A bullfrog’s raspy mating call rolled up from the lake. I thought on that request for a bit then slowly opened my cabin door. He followed me inside. I found the light and flipped it on. Garrison shut the door and looked around. A flighty kind of expression settled on his face when he spied his flowers sitting beside my bed. “They look nice in that jar.”
“What do you want?” I enquired more sharply than I had intended. I was feeling squeezed by his presence. My cabin felt as roomy as our old treehouse now, and that was totally because of Garrison. The pleased look slipped from his face, and I instantly felt bad then got mad at myself for feeling bad.
“It’s been a few days since we met on the path…”
His big body tensed, I could see it on his jaw and the way his shoulders drew up under his wet t-shirt. He looked like he was readying himself for a fist to the solar plexus.
“You’re asking a lot from me, Garrison.” I pushed out as I stood smack dab in the middle of my one room cabin, my arms crossed, and my body tingly from his nearness. I could smell him now. I knew his scent well. It dredged up hundreds of memories of days playing in the town pool or a farm pond when visiting Garrison’s great uncle or the creek that ran through town. Of laughter, camaraderie, roughhousing and secrets shared. Maybe not all our secrets though. Some of those he and I had kept buried way down deep in our souls. Garrison was still harboring one though, and it was huge.
“I know.” My face must have shown my distaste of hearing that phrase yet again. “I mean, I realize that I’m asking you to do something that I’m not sure I would even do if someone I loved treated me so badly.”
“Then why do you expect it of me?”
“Because you’re a better person than I am, you always have been.” He paused as I absorbed that comment. I sucked in a short breath at the enormity of emotions in his deep brown eyes. “Because you’re the only person who knows me – the real me – the Garrison who is living a lie and doesn’t know how to stop.”
“Just tell the truth. Admit that you’re not straight,” I said and his mouth drew into a tight frown. “It’s not like you’d be the first professional athlete to come out.”
“I’d be the first baseball player in my league to come out,” he quickly replied. I chewed on that for a minute then nodded. Okay, so there were a few baseball players out there hiding a secret as big as Garrisons. There had to be. The numbers dictated that the odds of him being the only LGBT player in all those leagues that led to the pros, as well as the pros themselves, were close to nil. Numbers don’t lie.
I’d read online that 1.7 % of the American population identified as gay and 0.4% as bisexual. I’m not sure what the numbers were for Canada. Of course, those numbers seem to shift in each new survey, but let’s just run with the numbers in my head. So, if there are twenty teams in the southern league and each triple A team carries—
“How many men does each team carry?” I asked as I began mentally arranging numbers.
“Mal, stop doing percentages inside your head,” he softly said and my attention went back to him. I’d thought to argue then recalled just how well we knew each other. “It doesn’t matter to me how many gay men there are in the system. What matters is that none of them has come out yet.”
I exhaled through pursed lips. Yes, he was right. Each of us has to handle letting our loved ones know we’re gay in our own way. Given how machismo professional sports are, I can understand he’d be hesitant to be the first but by gosh someone had to be.
“You want me to forgive you for four years of cold shoulders to help you come out? If that’s the case, if you’re only looking for a friend to lean on as you tell your folks, your sister would be the better choice. You didn’t chew her heart up like bubble gum then spit it on the sidewalk.”
“I can’t tell Emily. She’s not even thirteen yet.” He gave me his “I’ve made up my mind” look.
“She already knows. She saw us that night in the treehouse.”
His face fell. I thought he might faint but then reminded myself that Garrison wouldn’t faint. He was a baseball player. They get hit with wild pitches and shake it off to take their turn at bat. I’d seen it happen repeatedly back in the days when Garrison and I would watch pro games on TV.
“No, she does not.” He mumbled then backed up to drop to my bed as his knees seemed to buckle. “She’s only a baby.”
“She’s much more mature than you give her credit for and she most certainly does know. She told me so.”
He buried his face into his hands and started crying. They were silent sobs, the kind that made no noise but racked the body. There was a moment when I didn’t know what to do, how to react. It raced by, thankfully, and I dashed to my collapsible hamper to look for a bandana. I found a blue one lying on top. It was stiff from lake water and sweat but I didn’t think Garrison cared at this point. I tugged it out of the dirty wash and hurried back to the bed. He had pulled the front of his wet t-shirt up and was now brutally scrubbing his face with it.
“Here, use this.” I held the dirty bandana out. Garrison peeked out from amid the folds of his soggy shirt and I sat down beside him. I had to. The man was a wreck and seeing him this distraught weakened my resolve about hating him. “Why are you so upset?”
“I don’t know.” He gasped and threw his head back to pull in several gulps of air. Tears wet his scruffy cheeks. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut. “What she must think of me.”
“She thinks you’re her big brother and she loves you. She’s worried about you, about us. Why are you so freaked out over being caught kissing another man? I don’t get it, Garrison.”
“My parents had plans, Mal, plans for me.” His voice trembled terribly. I had to si
t on my hands to keep from reaching out to console him. Then I felt like crap because I wasn’t consoling him. Garrison Rook was going to push me off the sanity wall yet. “They said it all the time. All they want for me is to be successful, find a nice girl, get married, have kids and be happy.”
“Yes, and being happy is the key point in that list.” He shook his head and continued to try to calm himself. “Garrison, I know your parents. They’re amazing people. They will love you no matter if you bring a woman – or a man – home.”
“No, nope, they were specific about it being a nice girl, not the next door neighbor’s hot son.”
I confess I might have preened inwardly just a bit to hear that he thought I was hot. Then I booted my ego aside because he was a dick, and in pain, and one of my dearest childhood friends and…well, and he needed me.
“Of course that’s what they said because that’s the norm. My dad said that as well, but when I told him I’d be marrying a man and not a woman, he adjusted. It was kind of a shock for him, at first, but he wants me to be happy. Just like your parents want you to be happy.” I wiggled around to the side, my hands under my khaki covered backside.
Garrison was still shaking his head in denial but his eyes were now open. He sniffled. My left hand snuck out from under my ass. I patted his thick biceps, right below where that tribal tattoo sat high up on his arm. Garrison shuddered, and his eyes fluttered shut as a sigh whispered over his lips. Something happened to me at that moment. Seeing him react so strongly to a light touch, to my light touch, it made the hate wither a bit. That scared me. I had been holding onto that hatred for so long that when it grew a little smaller the space it had taken inside of me felt empty. Then he lowered his head and looked at me.
Neither one of us said anything for quite a long time – we just sat there, on my bed, his shorts soaking the cover and sheets – and stared at each other. The flesh under my hand twitched slightly as it warmed to my touch.
“I missed you so much,” he said earnestly, or it sounded earnest. Trusting anything Garrison said was going to take some real work on my part. Did I really want to deal with that? It would so much easier to cling to the dark feelings.
So much easier.
“Explain to me why you never came back home, or why you only did when I was gone. Make me understand why you hurt me so much.” I croaked then cleared my throat as my hand slid from his arm to rest on my thigh.
He coughed once, more of a nervous thing if I recalled correctly, and then glanced to the flowers on the bed stand.
“I was afraid if I got near you again I’d slip up, do something gay and ruin everything. I thought…I thought if I avoided you, I could dodge the urges and feelings trying to get out.” He blew out a long breath. I drank in his profile – the proud chin, the short cute nose, and the sensual mouth that sat between. “I wanted to be normal.”
“Thank you for calling me and every other gay man out there abnormal.” I sort of joked. Garrison’s eyes flared and his head whipped toward me.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know, I was kidding. Mostly.”
“Shit, Mal, see what I mean? No matter what I say about this, it comes out wrong. How can I tell my parents about something that I don’t even grasp yet? And Emily? Or my new team? Christ, how can Emily know? Did we know what gay meant when we were twelve?” He bowed forward a bit so that his elbows rested on his bare knees. His sight seemed to be lingering on the floorboards.
“We knew it was a slur and used it as one.” Garrison winced, and I sighed. Yes, I too had tossed that word around as a young boy and not in a good way. “We knew being gay meant that something was bad or that was what society taught us. We were always calling things like movies gay.”
“You talking about that movie we borrowed from Clyde Romano? That lame Pokémon rip-off thing?” he asked and a small smile tweaked up one side of his mouth.
“That’s the one. We both got so mad about that.”
“Pokémon was the shit, my friend.” Garrison chuckled, and I felt as if I had been transported back in time. Before graduation night and the treehouse. Back when we were both boys and had nothing more to do than ride bikes, play catch in the backyard, and dream of growing up to be famous in our chosen fields. Back when we told each other just about everything.
“Yes, yes it was.” I sighed then shuffled my feet a bit just for something to do that didn’t include touching him again. The trips down memory lane had already knotted my sensibilities into a rat’s nest of confliction. “Emily probably has a much better grip on things than we did at her age. Girls are light years ahead of boys in terms of maturity.”
He inhaled and exhaled through his nose. Our knees bumped. My first reaction was to shoot up off the bed. The second was to slide closer so that his thigh and mine would touch. I did neither because…I didn’t know why. Right now, I didn’t know why I was doing anything that I was doing.
“I’ll think about it, although I don’t know how I’d even start a conversation about you and me with my baby sister,” he said then sat up straight. A barred owl sounded off just outside the cabin. I looked at the window then at the flowers Garrison had left me, and then at Garrison. His gaze lingered on me. A timid heat ignited inside. It was just a small flame of want. It was nothing that threatened to engulf me and for that, I was glad. I needed a cool, reasonable mind when dealing with him. The sad part was this man had always affected me in the exact opposite way. “Thanks for letting me come in and talk. Can we talk again, like later, some other day?”
I nodded softly. Garrison smiled and the world slid off its axis just a bit.
“Talking is okay.” I told him as he pushed to his feet. He looked like he wanted to say or do something. His fingers jumped slightly but he never made a move to touch me. He got to his feet as if the weight of the world rested on him.
“Night, Mal,” he said then left me with my rampaging thoughts and a wet spot on my bed. Sleep and I never met once that long summer night.
Six
With only ten days left of camp, I was finally coerced into partaking in one of the organized sporting events Garrison was heading. Please don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I dislike sports. I like them. I like watching people with great skill, like Garrison, playing their chosen sport. I’m just not overly fond of playing organized team sports because I suck at them. That’s why I took up walking and solo activities at the gym to keep me in shape. As soon as I’m drafted into any kind of team game I forget how to walk and talk simultaneously.
“You can stop making the face.” Garrison chided as he handed me a baseball mitt. Emily and the rest of my girls were already at their chosen places on the diamond. I had been forced – I mean picked – to fill in because Margie Winkler had a bad case of poison ivy and was sidelined. “You’ll be fine. Just go out into right field and catch any balls that come your way.”
“You make it sound so simple.” I mumbled and shoved my hand into the mitt to make sure it fit.
“That’s because it is simple, Mal.” He smiled then jogged off to attend to the girl gearing up to play catcher for our team. I rolled my eyes at his reply. If he had said that to me once growing up, he’d said it a thousand times. No matter what sport it pertained to – baseball, football, hockey, basketball, lacrosse, ping-pong, checkers, or foosball. Maybe for him it was simple. For me it was anything but. I sat down, put my mitt beside my walking shoes, and toed off my sandals. With a sigh of resolution, I bent over to pull on some socks.
“So, this is where you are.”
I looked up at Alex and nodded then returned to shoe tying. “This is where I am.”
“You just left me to set up things for the math scavenger hunt tomorrow to play softball with Garrison?”
“Oh hell.” I groaned then sat up and found Alex glaring down at me. “I’m really sorry. I totally forgot about our plans to set up the scavenger hunt. This morning was insane. Margie woke up covered with poison ivy. We had to hu
stle her to the nurse’s cabin. The game was scheduled and both teams were here, so I gallantly stepped up and volunteered to take her place.”
“When will you be free?” His sight flickered over the girls, the diamond, the sky, and then settled on something he found distasteful. I turned on the bench to see that he was frowning in Garrison’s general direction.
“Probably in two hours? I’m not sure how long a softball game goes for. Is it nine innings like baseball?” I asked but didn’t get an answer to that query.
“Do you want me to wait for you or should I start setting things up?” He was upset. That much was obvious. His body language was screaming about his ire even if he was speaking softly.
“Go ahead and get started. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” One of the girls from my group shouted at me to hurry up because it was hot and they wanted to play sometime today. “Calm down, Sassy Sue!” I shouted and got a round of giggles from the girls. “I’m tying as fast as I can!”
“Can I ask you one thing?” Alex enquired as I pulled my left sneaker on.
“Sure.”
“What’s the story with you two?” My laces slipped from my fingers, and I glanced up. The sun was overhead, and I had to squint to see Alex. His mouth was a flat line. Why was he so upset over a small change of plans?
“We’re old childhood friends who had a falling out a few years ago.” I explained then returned to shoe tying. Girls – and Garrison – were now calling my name in an annoying rhyming fashion.
“Are you falling back in? Because I have to say, the way you two look at each other is far from “he’s my best buddy” looks.”