Rounding Third (10 page)

    
“Will there be a final?” Rob was joking.

    
“Every day is a test.” Josh was not.

    
“If you want to hang around tonight, dad was going to be home early and grill
some steaks.”

    
“Sounds fun. If my mother says okay.”

Josh asked Rob to get the basketball and they
began a game of one-on-one. After a few plays, Josh stripped off his shirt and
threw it on the grass. “It’s getting warm,” he said.

    
“You want something to drink?”

    
“No, thanks. Aren’t you hot?”

    
“I guess it is getting warm,” Rob said, wiping sweat from his forehead with his
sleeve.

    
“If you’re too warm, you can always take your shirt off,” Josh suggested.

    
“I’m okay.”

    
“You’ll end up with a trucker tan,” Josh smiled.

    
Rob hesitated a moment then threw his shirt next to Josh’s.

    
A couple of plays later, as Rob was trying to make a shot near the basket,
instead of jumping up to block it, Josh let him make the shot and dove in low
tackling Rob onto the grass. They began to wrestle and Josh kept trying to pin
Rob, which should have been easy with his sixty-five pound advantage, but given
Rob’s wiry strength, determined squirming, and the slickness of their bodies,
Josh could never quite finish him off. It didn’t help his efforts that they
were both laughing so hard. 

    
A car crunching gravel caused Josh to roll off Rob and sit up. Meg and her
father got out. If Meg’s smile burst any wider, it would have knocked her ears
off her head. “Hey, Josh,” she said.

    
“Hi, Mr. Wardell. Hi, Meg.”

    
“How’s it going, Josh?” Rob’s father asked.

    
“Great, thanks. You ready for a rematch?” Josh asked.

    
“I am, but I’m not sure Meg is. She just ran the one-hundred, the four-hundred,
and the four-hundred relay, and won all three!”

    
“Hey, congratulations!” Josh stood up to shake her hand.

    
“Way to go, Meg,” Rob added.

    
“If she’s as fast as her brother, she must be good,” Josh said. He slapped Rob
in the chest.

    
“I’m game,” Meg said, setting her gym bag down next to the shirts on the lawn.

    
As Josh and Mr. Wardell took the ball down court, Rob quietly said to his
sister, “You just want to guard Josh.”

    
“You know it. Especially since you guys are playing skins!”

    
She broke off her whispered conversation and went after Josh. She was
definitely playing the man and not the ball. With Meg glued to Josh and their
father trying to block Josh’s jumper, Rob was open on almost every play and
able to score at will. The game wasn’t close. Meg was very close.

    
When it was over, Mr. Wardell said, “I’ll get started on dinner while you guys
shower.”

    
When they got upstairs Meg hurried to the linen closet and got Josh one of the
thick bath towels that were reserved for guests, presenting it to him as though
it were a pillow holding a crown for a coronation.

    
When Josh came back into Rob’s room, he was wearing only the towel. “Did Meg
try to attack you while you were in the shower?” Rob asked.

    
Josh laughed. “I wish! She waited and went in after I got out.”

    
Rob laughed. “You sure take her crush well.”

    
“It’s kind of flattering.”

    
“Do you know how many girls have crushes on you?”

    
“Yeah, right.”

    
“If Meg’s friends are any indication, quite a few. And I hear girls talking in
class.”

    
“I just need one girlfriend, not a whole school full of groupies.”

    
“You have Jenny.”

    
“Yeah, I guess we’re a couple now.”

During dinner, Josh again regaled the family
with stories of Rob’s baseball smarts, with particular emphasis on Rob’s saving
him from the bean-balls.

Rob woke at 2:30 and found himself on the
floor again doing sit ups. Why did his happiness always seem so short? He knew
the next day Josh was likely to go back to ignoring him to hang out with Danny
Taylor.

                                                           
12

“Wardell. Schlagel,” the Coach beckoned them
after everyone else headed to the locker room after practice. “I noticed you
and Wardell skipped the showers last night. Three laps for each of you.”

Rob had showered, such as his showers were,
but he said nothing. Rob knew from being in Hudson’s office that the coach had
a view of the parking lot, but not the locker room, so he must have seen them
leaving too quickly. As Rob and Josh started off on their penalty run, Josh
said, “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

“Not a problem,” Rob said. “I run anyway.”

“Are you going to push me like you did last
time? I need to get home in time for church.”

Rob took off with Josh in pursuit. It didn’t
allow for much conversation, but they finished the three miles quickly. Hudson
sat in his car in the parking lot to make sure they ran by him the requisite
number of times.

“You set a heck of a pace,” Josh panted as
they entered the locker room. “You look like you could run forever.”

“Some days I wish I could,” he answered as he
went to his corner of the locker room and hollered back. “You want to shower
first?”

“We can shower together since we need to
hurry.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Rob was prepared for the sight of red stripes
on Josh’s ass but there were also bruises all over his torso. Rob tried to
avert his eyes as much as possible, take the briefest of showers, and dress
quickly.

As they drove home he said, “You can just
drop me at the entrance to Quail Run so you can get home sooner.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I can run home from there.”

    
“Thanks.”

    
When Rob ran into the kitchen his mother was working on dinner. “Josh called,”
she said. “His number’s on the pad by the phone, he said to call him.”

    
Rob tore off the number and went upstairs to the sewing room, closed the door
and punched the numbers into the phone. “Hey, Josh.”

    
“Hi.”

    
“What’s wrong?”

    
“They had already left for church when I got home. My father’s going to kill
me. I can be late because of a game, but not from practice. And if I told him
I’m late because I got in trouble at practice, it’d be even worse.”

    
“You can blame me if you want. Say it was my fault.”

    
“That won’t help. And my mother is already suspicious enough of you.”

    
“Suspicious of what?”

    
“You, well, you, I guess you aren’t quite Christian enough because you don’t go
to our church. But thanks again for what you did with her.”

All through dinner and Rob’s lame attempt at
his term paper, he couldn’t stop thinking about Josh being beaten by his
father. That as much as his usual traumas drove Rob to the floor of his bedroom
in the middle of the night to punish his own body. 

    
*                     
*                     
*                     
*                     
*
        

Another post-baseball and post-basketball game
wrestling match over, Rob and Josh stretched their shirtless bodies on the
lawn. Josh said, “Why don’t I ask Jenny to see if one her friends wants to go
to the prom with you? It would be fun to double date.”

    
“Get real.”

    
“A lot of girls think you’re cute,” Josh protested.

    
“If they think I’m cute—-which I doubt—-they might think I’m cute like a baby
rabbit is cute, but they don’t want to date them. They think you’re cute the
way Orlando Bloom is cute.”

    
“I’m just saying...”

    
“I know what you’re saying, and it’s more humiliation and rejection than I
need, but thanks.”

    
Josh sat up and brushed the grass off Rob’s back. “I’m sorry.”

    
“I have the feeling this conversation isn’t over,” Rob said turning around to
look at Josh.

    
“Well, I had a favor to ask and now this makes it kind of awkward. I, uh, that
is, if you would, if you don’t mind, I mean I understand if...”
     Rob tackled Josh and knocked him backwards and pinned
his shoulders to the ground. “Spit it out, Schlagel!”

    
“Condoms. I need them for the prom. My parents would kill me if they found out
I bought some or had them in the house...” Rob started laughing and for a while
couldn’t stop.

    
Josh sat back up to study him. “What’s so funny?”

    
“Nothing,” Rob said, choking back tears of laughter.

    
“If we could stop at a store some day, and I’d give you the money, and you
could go in, and then you could keep them until prom day and then...” Rob was
still laughing. What’s so funny?”

    
“Nothing,” Rob said doubled over now in pain from laughing so hard.

    
Josh tackled Rob and pinned him from above, kneeling on Rob’s arms so he
couldn’t move and began pounding on Rob’s stomach. “What is so funny?” he
demanded while laughing himself. Rob’s face was in Josh’s crotch and Rob was
laughing so hard he could barely breathe. While Josh continued laughing and
punching, Rob couldn’t help notice the bulge in Josh’s gym shorts growing. He
realized his own shorts were expanding, too.

    
Josh fell off onto to ground, exhausted but still laughing. “So will you do
it?”

    
“Yeah. Meg will love seeing you all dressed up in your tux.”

                       
*                     
*                     
*                     
*                     
*

    
Rob did crunch after crunch, the sweat running off his naked body onto his
bedroom floor but the pain in his stomach did nothing to push away thoughts of
Josh. It was stupid to be jealous of Jenny. After all Jenny was Josh’s
girlfriend. Rob was just a friend. That’s all he wanted them to be, close
friends. Like Batman and Robin. Ben and Jerry. Tom and Jerry. It was Josh
hanging around with Danny Taylor that really pissed him off.

13
 

The team’s fourth win in a row didn’t excuse
Rob and Josh from the laps that were becoming an almost daily occurrence.
“Okay, gentlemen,” Coach Hudson said as they finished their last lap. 

“Hudson wouldn’t have us doing laps if he
knew we had so much fun doing them,” Josh said, still laughing from the last of
Rob’s jokes.

It was the hottest day of the year so far,
almost 80. Summer was starting early. Josh’s baseball shirt was plastered to
his body. Josh lifted the tail to wipe some moisture from his face. Rob watched
one remaining drop run its course down Josh’s temple and off his chin.

“You notice I’m keeping up with you now?”
Josh’s cock-eyed grin slid so far to the right it looked like it might slide
into his dimple.

    
Rob felt the swelling in his shorts growing. Lately when Josh was around, Rob
seemed to have no control over that part of his body. Josh had to notice that
when they were wrestling. Rob had certainly noticed Josh. Lately he had been
watching Josh too intently and springing a woody just as it was time to hit the
showers. It took all of his concentration to try to suppress it especially if
he made the mistake of even glancing at Josh in the locker room or
shower. 

    
“You’re definitely getting me in shape.” Josh stripped off his shirt to look
down at his sweat-streaked body. “And I’ve been doing sit-ups, too.” He patted
his firm, flat stomach as though it were a beer gut. “Wish I had killer abs
like yours.”

    
Rob looked up and all of his attempts to relax were useless as the blood rushed
to his groin so suddenly he thought he might pass out. He gulped for air like a
fish just landed in the bottom of a boat. As many times as he had seen Josh
shirtless or naked, the sight never ceased to dazzle him and lately had been
driving him crazier than ever. 

    
“I wish the coach would let us take our shirts off during practice,” Josh said.
“Days like today. I’d like to work on my tan.”