151 Days (13 page)

My hands kept moving lower until my fingertips touched the waistband of his underwear. I froze with indecision for a moment and then threw caution to the wind.

My fingers slipped under the waistband and went lower.

“’Bout time,” he said wryly. “You can’t take a hint worth shit.”

I looked over to double check if the door was locked before turning him over. “You want to see a hint?” I said evilly.

“Show me,” he said, smiling back.

We figured out that night that we only needed fourteen minutes of alone time to get our business done. It was a handy number to know.

T
HAT
S
ATURDAY
they had an all-day practice that Brad was not looking forward to.

I had wanted to watch, but he just told me to stay home because it was going to be long and not much to see. I had the impression he didn’t want me to see Coach Gunn screaming at them. Either way, I was bored waiting at home for him to finish up. Sometime after three I was woken up by a knock on my door. When I opened it, there was an exhausted Brad smiling at me like a loon.

He held up a piece of paper. “I know what I want to do.”

“Recycle?” I said, inviting him in.

“No. I know what I want to do for Kelly,” he said, walking in excitedly.

I closed the door, concerned. “What do you mean, do for Kelly?”

He sat down and began to explain. “I’ve been dying to do something in his name, and I couldn’t figure it out. I thought maybe we could do some kind of play or something, but I just couldn’t come up with an idea. And then the coach called me in after practice and gave me this, and I know what I want to do.”

He handed me the piece of paper. It was a list with a bunch of names followed by what looked like measurements. It took me a few seconds to translate them into what they were. “Are these the uniforms?”

He nodded. “I remember I looked through the catalog at Tyler’s one day when I was bored. And I saw all the different types of uniforms they had. At the time I had no idea what it meant, but it just came to me.”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“They make a uniform that has a black armband sewn into it. If I order those instead of the usual ones, we’d have to wear them, right?” He looked so eager it broke my heart.

“Brad,” I said, sitting down next to him. “You can get kicked off the team for this. I mean, this isn’t just a little thing. You’re talking about thousands of dollars in school funds if they have to reorder the uniforms. This isn’t a little thing.”

“But they can’t,” he implored me. “There is no way they could get new uniforms by the first game. Even if they reordered, they’d have to wear these at least once. See? Either way I win.”

I honestly had no idea how much guilt had been gnawing at him. “You don’t win if they kick you off the team.” I could see by his face this wasn’t working, so I tried another tack. “Have you tried asking Coach Gunn?”

He got up, frustrated, and began to pace. “Kelly wasn’t a baseball player, and besides, Coach Gunn ain’t gonna do anything. He’s like everyone else at that school. This is the only chance I have to do something.”

I got up and walked over to him. “You know you’ve done a lot already, right?”

When he looked over at me, his eyes were bright green, which meant he was about to start crying. “You’re a lousy liar. I haven’t done a thing. I need to do this. Please.”

I hate it when he cries.

“At least let me look over the rules before you do something crazy, okay?” His mood brightened up instantly. “No promises. But let me look at the league guidelines and see how much trouble you can get into first.”

He nodded quickly and then leaned in and kissed me. “I love you so much.”

I kissed him back, but I felt like this was a bad idea.

I
SKIMMED
over the Foster High baseball guidelines for an hour or so. There was nothing specific about uniforms except they couldn’t have advertising on them, couldn’t have anything distracting, and if one had something on them, they all had to have it. Besides that, there wasn’t much else to speak of. There was nothing that said a team couldn’t wear a black armband on their uniform out of tribute. According to the web, several major league teams had done it in the past, and most high school guidelines were taken from the big leagues.

“So?” Brad asked me as he bit into an apple he found in the fridge.

I closed his laptop and sighed. “Well, there is nothing that says you can’t do it.”

Which was all he heard. “Yes. So they can’t stop us from wearing them?”

“They can’t stop
them
from wearing it. There is no way they won’t kick you off the team. You have to know that.” I saw the look on his face, and it told me he did know that.

He just didn’t care.

“But the team can’t get in trouble for wearing them?” he asked, ignoring my
question.

I sighed heavily before nodding.

“Then let’s get to Tyler’s.”

I wanted to argue, but I knew if our positions were reversed, I’d just want him to help me. So I pulled my shoes on and went with him.

We found a parking space a few doors down, and we began to walk to Tyler’s. “Oh. So I’m taking an ice bath, and Josh gets into the tub.”

I looked over at him. “Say what?”

“I was in one of the ice tubs, and Josh Walker got in with me,” he said again.

I stopped. “I don’t even know what that means,” I said after a few seconds.

He laughed. “We have these big tubs full of ice water, and we soak in them after practice to help with swelling. And they are big enough for two guys. So I was taking one, and Josh got into it with me.”

“Naked?” I asked, stopping his story.

“Well, yeah. You do know most guys in the locker room are naked, right?” he asked me.

“You do know that is completely different from sitting in a tub with another guy?” I shot back.

He began to slowly crack a smile. “Are you jealous?”

“Am I jealous that Mr. Josh ‘I have no body fat and you could cut glass on my cheekbones’ Walker was naked in a tub with my boyfriend? No, why would I have a problem with that at all?” So this was what wild jealousy felt like.

He began to openly laugh. “Okay, one, I was more pissed than anything he was in my tub, and two, you do know Josh Walker is about the straightest boy in the world, right?”

I didn’t say a word.

“Oh God, Kyle, seriously? Josh Walker is not my type.”

I gave him a look. “So then, in shape, cut, muscular as hell, and ridiculously handsome is not your type? Now I know why you go out with me.” Yeah, that sounded lame even to me.

“You’re insane,” he said, moving up and hugging me. “My type is tall, lanky, no body fat, smarter than the other guys, and who has sex like a porn star.” I tried to look away, but he wouldn’t let me. “You have nothing to be jealous of when it comes to Josh Walker.” His hand cupped the front of my jeans and squeezed. “Trust me. Nothing.”

I felt like my face was on fire from all the blushing, but I still smiled.

“There we go,” he said, smiling back. “So, we good?” I nodded. “Okay. So, as I was saying, I’m taking an ice bath, and Josh gets into the tub.” I nodded. “And he starts asking about you and me. And Jennifer.”

I looked at him the same way a dog looks at you when you say more than just its name.

“He asked if you and me and Jennifer were…
together
,” he said, emphasizing the together.

Still nothing.

“Like,
together
,” he stressed.

Lightbulb.

“He asked if we were all, like….” I made a gesture with my hands of two people pressing against each other.

He stopped in front of Mr. Parker’s door. “Dude, I have no idea what that meant.” He pointed to my hands. “But I am pretty sure he was asking if the three of us were banging each other.”

I’m not sure if my mouth dropped open in shock, but I knew I was stunned enough that I was unable to say anything for a while.

Brad smiled evilly before he opened the door and walked into the store. I followed about half a step behind, jaw starting to behave again, mind in a tailspin. Is that what everyone thought? That we were all in some kind of a…
thing
?

Mr. Parker stood behind the counter watching something on his laptop.

Brad said loudly, “I know I am not paying you to watch movies, young man.”

Mr. Parker flipped us off as I closed the door.

“That didn’t work coming from my dad. I have no idea why you think you’ll do any better,” he said, closing the computer.

Brad held up the piece of paper. “I have the uniform order. So you might want to be nice to me.”

He rolled his eyes and looked at me. “Can’t you control him?”

I always liked it when Mr. Parker treated me like I was the one in charge of the relationship. No one else ever did that. “I suppose I could buy a collar and a leash, but he’d still jump up and try to hump people.”

Brad managed a good, fake hurt-puppy look. “Hey!”

I gave him a peck on his cheek and added, “But you are the cutest mongrel in town.”

I could see he was calculating to see if being the cutest mongrel was a good thing or not. At the same time, he said, “So here are the sizes for this year,” and handed Tyler the piece of paper. From where I was standing, he looked like he was working up the courage to tell Tyler the rest of his plan. His shoulders tightened, and I could see the muscles in his jaw knotting.

Mr. Parker skimmed it over. “Looks about right.”

Brad looked over at me and, though he said nothing, asked me with his eyes if he should do it. Though I hated this plan, I knew it was what Brad thought he needed to do. So I nodded at him. He took a deep breath and turned back to Mr. Parker. “So what if I wanted to change something real small on that order?”

Even though he didn’t have kids, Mr. Parker had that spider sense all adults seem to have when kids were trying to do something sneaky around them. His eyes narrowed, and he gave Brad a look. “Why do I have a feeling I am going to hate this? Brad? I am going to hate this, aren’t I?”

I laughed quietly and thought,
You have no idea.

Out loud I laughed and almost said something, but Brad shot me a look, and I quietly closed my mouth. This was Brad’s show, and I was here for moral support. “What if I wanted you to order a certain type of uniform instead of the ones the school always orders?”

The look on Mr. Parker’s face shifted, like he still hoped this might be part of a joke. “I’d ask you why in the world would I do that?”

“For me?” Brad tried.

Concerned, Mr. Parker rounded the corner of the counter and stood, arms folded, watching Brad. “You know I like you, Brad, and you helped me out of a jam during Christmas. But this,” he said, holding up the uniform order, “this isn’t something small. If I were to purposefully screw up this order, next year, I assure you, Coach Gunn will go online to order team uniforms. And, if word got out, Coach James at Granada would do the same. You know how much of my business is dependent on those school orders, not just for baseball, but for every other sport.”

Brad didn’t say anything at first. I could see him trying to do the math in his head to counter Mr. Parker’s logic. “But what if you say I lied to you? Blame it all on me.” He was close to pleading, which was odd for Brad. And I suddenly was glad I had swallowed my words earlier.

“So then I wouldn’t be an incompetent business owner, I’d be a gullible one instead. Different opinion, same outcome. They would just stop ordering from me.” He could see the urgency in Brad’s expression and quietly asked, “Brad, what’s this all about anyway? Even if I did tell the coach and Principal Raymond you lied to me, they would kick you off the team in seconds. And that’s the best-case scenario. Worst case they bill your parents for replacement uniforms. For a whole team, that isn’t cheap.” His voice got a little gentler. “So what’s up?”

Brad didn’t say a word, but I could see his shoulders slump in defeat. “I am a complete fuckup,” he said more to himself than to us. “I can’t get anything right.”

Bad idea or not, it was my boyfriend’s idea, and I realized I wanted to back him up on it.

“It’s for Kelly,” I said in the silence. “They make a uniform that has a black band for mourning sewn onto it already. We thought that if we ordered those, the team would wear them, and it would be for Kelly. Like a tribute.”

Mr. Parker’s resolve slipped a bit when he understood what Brad wanted to do. Everyone had that same look when someone brought up Kelly: sorrow mixed with liberal amounts of guilt and regret. “Wow. That’s…,” he said, choking on his words. “That’s a good idea, guys. Did you ask Coach Gunn?”

“You know what he’ll say,” Brad said, now outright pleading. “He is just as bad as everyone else at school. He was at the school board meeting trying to get me kicked off the team too, wasn’t he?”

The bitterness in Brad’s voice took me aback. I had no idea he had this much anger about almost getting kicked off the team. He hid it all so well, never once complaining he had risked his chance to play for everyone else, that I had just assumed he was okay with it. But I could see in the way he clenched his hands into fists and the harshness in his voice that he was nowhere near okay with what had gone down, and I’d had no idea. It stopped me for a moment because I wondered, what else had I missed? What if I didn’t know him at all?

I pushed those thoughts aside and instead concentrated on what was in front of me. I really wanted to get this done for Brad. “Look, Mr. Parker, I know you could get into a lot of trouble, but you know how much they want to sweep what happened to Kelly under the rug. If coaches try to cancel your accounts, you can make an argument that the administration and the teachers are trying to cover up the parts about Foster they don’t like again. I’m sure there are a lot of people who would be on your side.”

Tyler looked five years older than when we walked in as he looked directly into our eyes. “But even if people were on my side, things would have changed. Purposely placing the wrong uniform order, no matter how good the motive, isn’t the right thing to do. They trust me with their money, guys, and I don’t take that lightly.”