Going the Distance (27 page)

“Are you telling me God didn’t say that being gay was wrong?”

“I’m saying there is a lot that Leviticus says is wrong. If all you can see is gay, then you’re trying too hard. Come on, Danny, why is this such a problem for you?”

“
Because I’m tired of being a failure!
”
I raged at him. “
I don’t want to be seventy feet tall and I don’t want to be the guy who never knows anyone and I don’t want to be the faggot who disappointed my dad!
”

I could see the shock on his face as he realized how much being like this was killing me.

“I can’t do it any more, Nate, I can’t. I just want to be normal. I just want to be another guy.” I felt a sob shudder through me. “I’m tired of all of this. I just want to be normal.”

He looked shocked as I broke down. His arms surrounded me, and I leaned into him. “Okay, Smalls, I’m sorry. I’ll drop it. If you’re happy with this girl, then be happy. That’s all I want for you.”

It was all I wanted for me too, but I didn’t think I was ever going to get it.

I went back to the hotel and slept like the dead. All my hopes and dread for tomorrow canceled each other out, and I didn’t even remember if I dreamed or not. I woke up at the alarm and for a few precious seconds could not remember why today was important. It was like the greatest gift the universe could have given me, because everything had fallen away in the mists of sleep, and I was just a guy waking up.

“You ready to win this?” my roommate asked, and it came rushing back.

Oh yeah, life.

We worked out a little in the gym, stretching out the kinks and getting warmed up. So far we hadn’t seen the other team. There was a whole other gym they were given to work out in. We had avoided each other the whole week, so it was kinda cool. The auditorium began filling up as we retreated back into the locker room to get ready.

We all sat in silence as the roar of the crowd filtered in. We were all nervous, but we were ready. As ready as we were going to get.

“So we’re here,” the coach said five minutes before the game. “This is it. I’m sure I’m supposed to tell you this is just another game and to go out there and play your asses off, but I can’t. This is it, boys, this is the whole ballgame. You win, and we’re on to State, and win or
lose, we’re in the big time. We lose, we go home and get to watch these idiots play the game we’re supposed to be in on TV. So go out there and destroy them. They’ve made a few changes to their team, but we should be ready.” He looked at me and asked, “You sure you can do this?”

I gave him a confused look. “Yeah, I’m ready.” Was he doubting that I could handle this?

“We know our game—let’s go play it,” the coach assured us.

A guy knocked on the door and poked his head in. “Corpus, you guys are up.”

We all stood in a huddle, and I put my hand in the middle of us. “Tigers on three,” I said.

“One, two, three.”

The echoing of us all screaming “Tigers” as loud as we could was deafening as we ran out onto the court. The noise of the crowd hit us like an explosion when we entered the court. There were lights everywhere, and I could see a bank of cameras off the court reminding me this was being televised. It was hotter than any court I had been on. I couldn’t even see the people in the stands, so finding my dad and Nate was impossible. We gathered on our side of the court, and the coach reminded us of some last minute pointers.

As the big man on the team, I was the one to tip off for first possession.

“You’re sure you can do this?” the coach asked me before I walked out onto the court. “Because I need your head in the game, not in the past.”

Again I looked at him, confused. “I’m here to win, Coach.”

“Good,” he said, slapping my back. “Go do this.”

I walked out and tried to get my eyes used to the huge floodlights they had set up. There was going to be a lot of playing time watching the floor instead of looking up unless I wanted to be blinded. I got up to the line and took a deep breath.

“You know, I’d say I was surprised, but I’m not going to lie,” the guy from the other team said in a voice that sent chills down my spine. I looked up and saw Cody glaring back at me. “So I’ll just say it’s going to feel awesome kicking your ass.”

My mind froze as the ref blew the whistle and tossed the ball up.

“
Time!
” I screamed as Cody jumped up for the ball, and I just stood there.

Half the crowd groaned as the other half began to boo. Cody had, of course, tapped the ball toward his team, but he realized the game was not on and stumbled to a stop. “What the fuck?” he growled, looking over at me. “You come here to play or to fuck around?”

He looked good, really good. I could see he had filled out the same as I had. What was once cute was now clearly hot. I tried to banish those thoughts as I walked over to him. “What…?” I was about to ask him what he was doing there, but that was a stupid question.

“Are you playing, twenty-two, or what?” the ref asked me.

“Where did you come from?” I asked, knowing he wasn’t on any of the tapes I’d watched earlier.

“Transferred,” Cody said with a bitter smile. “What? Not happy to see me?”

I took a step toward Cody. “What I did to you was wrong, and I’m sorry for that, and you have every right to be pissed at me.” His eyes narrowed. “And any other time I would fall down on my knees and beg for you to forgive me, but that isn’t going to happen right now.” I took another step until I was right in his face. “Right now I’m going to play circles around you and go on to State. If you want to talk after that, you know where to find me.”

Before he could even blink, I turned back to the ref and said, “Yeah, I’m ready to play.”

And I was.

We both went up for the ball, but it wasn’t close. Cody was a little over six feet, and from what I could see, he had great calf muscles, but I had seven inches on him standing still. Jumping? It was a joke. There was a brief moment where I felt his arm slam into my gut as I came down, but we both knew the refs had no chance of seeing it, so I ignored it. Instead I came down on his left foot as hard as I could, making it clear I was not going to back down from him.

He chased after me with a slight limp, but it was no use, I had the advantage, and I was going to press it.

The first quarter wasn’t as overwhelming as I thought it would be. They had done their homework on our team, no doubt with the information by their new teammate Cody. He knew how I used to play, and it showed by the way he crowded me with every step I took.

It was like having a mouthy shadow who obviously hated my ever-loving guts. “So come on, fag, what you think you’re gonna do?” he said under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear as I waited to see where Evans was going with the ball. “So which one of these guys are you screwing? Or do they not know what you are?”

I took a step back into him, knocking him on his ass instantly.

“Oh, sorry, man,” I said, looking down at him. “Didn’t see you down there.”

He looked over at a ref, but even if they’d been watching me, it would have looked like an accident. Cody got up and chased after me as I tried to banish his words from my mind. He was so pissed at me, you could hear it in his voice, and it was like daggers in my ears. This is what I did to people. I made them hate me like no other.

“I miss you.”

My head spun around to look at him. His voice had broken, and
for half a second he sounded so real, so in pain. The ball hit me in the small of my back as I completely missed the pass. Laughing, he tore around me, took the ball, and scored, while I just stood there, staring like an idiot. That was the moment I began to worry that we could lose this.

This went on until halftime. We were better than them, but I was playing so badly that I was actually fucking other people up on the court, so it was closer than anyone wanted to say. We jogged back to the locker room. I was in the back, and before I could get off the court the coach grabbed my arm. Hard.

“I am going to go in there and give a speech about how we need to play harder and think faster. But what we really need to do is replace you out there. I asked if this was going to be a problem, which meant I assumed you’d gone over their roster changes. Obviously I was wrong. Go talk to him, go scream, go take a walk around the arena, but when halftime is over, if you aren’t playing any better, I swear I will bench your ass.”

I can’t imagine they give many scholarships to guys who get benched ’cause their ex-kinda-boyfriends were taunting them on the court. Instead of going back to the locker room, I scanned the stands and found Nate and my dad, looking back at me with concern. I waved them down because if I didn’t talk to someone, I was about to scream, and once started, I don’t know if I could have stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Nate asked the second I was within earshot. He knew how I played, and he knew when I was playing badly.

“That’s Cody,” I explained. I had told him the basics during that summer when he was my kinda nurse, so he understood the name instantly.

“Oh shit,” he said, looking shocked. “Well, in that case, you’re playing a hell of a game, ’cause if my ex-girlfriend was shadowing me all game, I would have lost it already.”

“That’s the boy who moved away?” my dad asked, looking back to the other team’s locker room.

I nodded but kept looking at Nate. “This is punishment. This is what I get for even trying to satisfy those—” I paused as I tried to dig up the correct words. “—unnatural impulses. Do you see now? I’m not supposed to be like that.”

He opened his mouth to argue but then paused.

“Okay, you know what? Let’s go with that theory. You think this is punishment from up high because you dared to like a guy? And you think the Almighty takes time from his schedule to fuck up a high school basketball game, great. Then there’s only one way to make this right.” I looked at him, waiting for him to give me the answer. “If this is God’s punishment, the only way you can get out of it is going and apologizing to Cody. You have to ask forgiveness for your sins, and then it’s done. He doesn’t have to give it, but you have to ask. It’s that simple.”

It was so simple an answer, it had to be the right one.

“Wish me luck,” I said, walking toward the other team’s locker room. My dad called after me, but I ignored him because this wasn’t something I could be talked out of. Nate was right. I needed to ask forgiveness for my transgressions against whatever and move on. It was a sign.

Security looked at me weirdly for a moment when I walked up to the locker room, but they waved me through; after all, I was a basketball player. There were a score of assistant coaches and trainers standing outside the actual locker room, with the coach inside giving a speech about how the game was going, no doubt.

Their jaws literally dropped open when they saw me walk in.

“I need to talk to Cody Franks, please,” I asked as politely as possible.

“You can’t be back here,” one of them said, trying to reestablish the rules of normalcy.

“It won’t take a second,” I assured them.

When it was clear I wasn’t going anywhere, one of them knocked on the locker room door and stuck his head in. There was a loud bellow of “Who the fuck is out there?” before the coach came barreling out, more than a few players on his heels. “You need to get the hell out of here before I call a ref and have you thrown out of the game.”

“I need to talk to Cody Franks for a second, sir, and then I’m gone.”

Cody was peering out of the locker room behind the coach. I could see the shock on his face when he saw I was standing there.

“I’m not kidding, son. Get out of here now,” he warned.

Ignoring him, I looked at Cody. “I seriously need five minutes, or I can say what I want to say in front of all these people.”

“I’ll talk to him, Coach,” Cody said quickly.

“What?” he asked, now confused as to what was going on.

“Please, Coach, it’ll be quick.”

Seeing he had lost control of whatever was happening, the coach dismissed me with his hand and screamed for the team to get back in the locker room. They walked in, but it was obvious everyone wanted to hear what was about to go down. Cody and I walked back toward the court, far enough from anyone who might hear us.

“Okay, talk,” he said gruffly.

I took a deep breath and just let it go. “What I did was wrong. I was attracted to you and that was wrong, and I should have never even tried anything with you, and for that I apologize. I’m not like that anymore, and I understand why you might not care, but I’m telling you here and now I was wrong, I fucked up, and I’m sorry. Truly. I’m asking you to forgive me, but I understand if you won’t. Right now I’m more concerned that God might not forgive me, but I’m still asking.”

He glared at me, speechless, for almost a minute. Finally he shook his head and said, “You’re fucking crazy. You’re a fruitcake, Danny, and you can try to pray to every God who will listen, but it isn’t going to change. I know that because I have to tell myself that every morning when I wake up. I don’t know what happened between us, but if you think I’m going to just drop it so you can win a game—”

“I don’t care about the game,” I said, surprised to find I wasn’t lying. “I just don’t want you to hate me anymore.”

His anger faded for a moment, and he said in a quiet voice, “I don’t hate you, Danny. I wish I could.”

“I am so sorry, Cody,” I said again, feeling tears coming to my eyes. “If I had it all to do again—”

Which was when my coach kicked open the door and saw me in the other team’s locker room. “
Goddammit, Monroe! Are you trying to get us disqualified?”
I looked at Cody, and I could see him wanting to say something, but there were too many people around now. Instead he just gave me a sad smile and nodded.

And just like that, a weight was lifted off my chest, and I could breathe again.

The coach dragged me back to our locker room, and there was much screaming and yelling, but I was oblivious to it. I had been forgiven, and that was all I needed in that moment. When he realized I wasn’t listening, he stopped yelling and went back to his dry-erase board and began going over plays. When he was done, he looked at me. “You have anything you want to say?”